SILC 2021v09.i01.

Volume 9, Issue 1 - 2021 · ISSN 2534-9538
S  L,
C  FLT
Konstan﬒n Preslavsky Universi﬑ of Shumen

Department of English Studies
Studies in Linguistics,
Culture and FLT
Volume 9, Issue 1 - 2021
Discourses of Change:
Language and Literature
Konstantin Preslavsky University of Shumen

Department of English Studies
This first issue of the ninth volume of Studies in Linguistics, Culture, and FLT
is the end result of the work of the Department of English Studies, Faculty of
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Assoc. Prof. Carol Griffiths, PhD (UK), Prof. Dr. Habil. Anna Bączkowska
(Poland), Prof. Peter Gärdenfors (Sweden), Prof. Dr. el-Sayed el-Aswad (USA),
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Zeynep Z. Atayurt-Fenge (Turkey), Assoc. Prof. Irina Ivanova,
PhD (Bulgaria), Prof. Dr. Birsen Tütünis (Turkey), Prof. Dr. Habil Berrin
Aksoy (Turkey), Prof. D. Litt. Maya Pencheva (Bulgaria), Joanna Mikosz, PhD
(Poland), Assist. Prof. Mira Bekar, PhD (The Republic of North Macedonia)
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© Studies in Linguistics, Culture, and FLT
© Asenevtsi Publishing, Sofia
e-ISSN 2534-9538; p-ISSN 2534-952X
DOI: 10.46687/SILC
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Contents
PREFACE........................................................................................................5
FEATURE: A GENOLOGICAL DRAFT

Natalia Kowalska-Elkader..............................................................................7
TRANSLATORS’ DILEMMAS IN TRANSLATING POETRY:

THE CASE OF GANE TODOROVSKI’S POETRY IN ENGLISH
Silvana Neshkovska, Sonja Kitanovska-Kimovska,
Daniela Andonovska-Trajkovska................................................................... 21
ANOREXIA MIRABILIS DECODED: REREADING

FEMALE CORPOREAL CONSUMPTION IN DICKENS’S
ANGELIC DAUGHTERS
Hristo Boev...................................................................................................40
RESEARCH METHODS IN LINGUISTICS: AN OVERVIEW

Snejana Obeyd.............................................................................................. 54
TO DISTORT OR NOT TO DISTORT: COMPARATIVE

ANALYSIS OF BRITISH AND BULGARIAN MEDIA
DISCOURSE REPRESENTATIONS OF FIRE DISASTERS
Ivaylo Gorchev.............................................................................................. 83
Discourses of Change: Language and Literature 5
PREFACE
This first issue of volume 9 of Studies in Linguistics, Culture, and FLT titled
“Discourses of Change: Language and Literature” encompasses five papers
dealing with different aspects of language, comparative linguistics, literature,
and journalism.
The issue opens up with a paper on a very specific genre in journalism, i.e.
the feature, or artistic radio documentary. Using literary analysis and criticism
as well as structural analysis, Natalia Kowalska-Elkader provides a review of
the origin of this genre, its subgenres according to their structure and used
sound materials. The first more theoretical part of her study is followed by
presentations of the various types of feature according to the type of fiction
or form. The author offers her own classification distinguishing eight different
types of modern drama on the basis of various Polish and foreign radio works
to exemplify them.
The issue continues with a paper on the translator’s dilemmas in translating
poetry. Silvana Neshkovska, Sonja Kitanovska-Kimovska, and Daniela
Andonovska-Trajkovska analyse two poems by the Macedonian poet Gane
Todorovski and their translation equivalents in English. The main focus of
analysis is on specific poetic features such as rhyme, rhythm, sound, tropes,
word choice and word order and the way they have been handled in translation.
The conclusion reached is that the translators have done their best to retain
the meaning and the general ideas as well as the rhythm of the original text,
however, due to Gane Todorovski’s specific style some losses were inevitable.
In “Anorexia Mirabilis Decoded: Rereading Female Corporeal Consumption in
Dickens’s Angelic Daughters” Hristo Boev reviews three of Dickens’s novels,
Dombey and Son, David Copperfield and Little Dorrit, in order to challenge
the claims made by some feminists that women in Dickens are sacrificed at the
expense of men. In his analysis the author compares the texts of the three novels
with information from newspapers of the period, medical studies and Victorian
culture reviews and comes to the conclusion that Dickens’s angelic daughters
employ various strategies in order to obtain the best husband for them and thus
become a successful patriarchal woman.
Snejana Obeyd provides an overview of the main research methods employed in
the study of language. She focuses successively on qualitative, quantitative and
mixed-method research describing their characteristics and consistently referring
to scholars who have contributed to the formulation of the respective research
paradigms. The author also presents some accounts of interesting applications of
each of the reviewed approaches by academics from the Department of English
Studies at Konstantin Preslavsky University of Shumen.
6 Studies in Linguistics, Culture and FLT - Volume 9, Issue 1. ISSN 2534-9538
The issue finishes with a paper by Ivaylo Gorchev, a PhD student, who applies
a critical discourse analysis on two catastrophic man-caused events in the UK,
i.e. the Grenfell Fire disaster, and in Bulgaria, the derailment of freight train in
Hitrino, which happened in 2017 and 2016, respectively. The focus of the analysis
is on objectivity of presenting the information. To that goal, public inquiries
and press conferences are compared to the publications which subsequently
appeared in the British and the Bulgarian media.
FEATURE:
A GENOLOGICAL DRAFT
Natalia Kowalska-Elkader
Department of Journalism and Social Communication,
Faculty of Philology, University of Lodz, Poland
Abstract: The genre which is the basis of my research and the subject of analysis in this
text is the feature, also called artistic radio documentary. The main aim of the article
is to show the variety of features and the possible way to define and understand this
genre. The first section describes the origins of this type of program and how it can be
defined by European, Australian and American researchers. It also provides the genre
pattern of feature divided into four aspects. Later in the text I describe subgenres of
contemporary feature based on their structure and used sound materials. The second
part of the text focuses on representations of these categories in Polish and foreign
productions and tries to classify them according to the type of fiction applied or its
form. The employed methods include literary analysis and criticism as well as some
elements of structural analysis. The research questions I ask myself are related to the
way of creating features, their form and its relation to the content.
Keywords: feature, radio documentary, radio art, narration, radio genres
__________________________
About the author: Natalia Kowalska-Elkader, Ph.D. is a radio researcher at the University of Lodz,
Poland. Her research is focused on artistic radio and sound art. She is interested in the experimental form
of audio art. She has published essays exploring feature genre and its subgenres. Author of two books
about the radio feature Forma i treść. Polski i zagraniczny feature radiowy oraz jego odmiany gatunkowe
(Łódź 2019) and about the experimental radio stories Historie eksperymentalne. Szkice o gatunkach radia
artystycznego (Łódź 2020). Member of the European Communication Research and Education Association
(Radio and Sound Section).
Copyright © 2021 Natalia Kowalska-Elkader
Article history: Received: 3 November 2020; Reviewed: 5 February 2021; Revised: 18 March 2021;
Accepted: 21 March 2021; Published: 19 April 2021
This open access article is published and distributed under a Creative Commons At-
tribution 4.0 International License.
Citation (APA): Kowalska-Elkader, N. (2021). Feature: A genological draft. Studies in Linguistics, Culture,
and FLT, 9(1), 7-20. doi: 10.46687/SILC.2021.v09i01.001.
The genre which is the basis of my research and the subject of analysis in this
text is the feature. The first section describes the origins of this type of program
and how it can be defined, and then the text focuses on representations of this
category in Polish and foreign productions, and tries to classify it according to
the type of fiction applied.
The essence of the feature is the synthesis of the documentary truth, the
perspective of the author and their creative expression. Reality becomes the
starting point for creating an artistic program whose form and content are
inseparably connected. Melchior Wańkowicz’s statement seems to be adequate
in this context: “Only when I get the fact [...] it grows, flourishes in synthesis,
comparisons, analogies. Fact is a catalyst for my imagination” (Kąkolewski,
1987, p. 9). Facts can trigger the imagination and give the material to create the
story. Artistic segments created by the author are not less important or disturbing
documentary messages, they are an inherent part of the feature and they can
also convey the truth. Wańkowicz distinguished essential and documentary
truth: “essential truth, although different from the documentary truth, is not
the truth of second quality” (Kąkolewski, 1987, p. 9). The concept of “essential
truth” as I understand it is telling a story that will reflect its essence, emotions
and atmosphere, not necessarily with the use of a documentary, authentic
recordings or cited facts. The feature’s resources are infinite, limited only by
the imagination of the creator, therefore the key to this genre are such formal
audio solutions and the use of all necessary phonic materials that will guarantee
the creation of a work of high artistic value while fully presenting the subject
discussed.
Feature radio programs derive from both aforementioned forms of radio,
allowing free intermingling of them and making full use of the possibilities
of radio broadcasting; moving away from extreme mimicry and transferring
artistic aspects to the relationship with reality, allowing the use of such elements
as: performances, radio drama scenes, music, original montage work or the
creation of programs in particular conventions. The centre of gravity is shifted
to the aesthetic function of the work. Representations of the genre on radio
stations in Western Europe, the United States and Australia often contain
fictional elements, and have been enriched artistically. Today all over the world
these works are called features, the English term cemented in Germany, South
Korea and in Polish research. Among Polish radio producers, like in the early
fifties in Germany (Fisher, 1964), not everyone uses the term feature and it is
often replaced by artistic radio documentary.
Definitions of the genre: western and Polish perspective

The feature allows you to take full advantage of what radio transmission
provides. This means that the resources are endless, and stories can be told in
many ways. In Western Europe, the United States or in Australia, the feature is
an extremely popular form, evidenced by, amongst other things, the fact that for
42 years an International Feature Conference has been organized, the buoyant
activity of the American Third Coast Festival, the hundreds of submissions
to the PocketDocs competition organized by Radio National in Australia, or
the long-term tradition of creating this type of work in the BBC. As Kinga
Klimczak (2011), a researcher of documentaries, writes, in the West “the radio
documentary existed immediately as a kind of artistic program for the selected”.
From the beginning, in addition to the production of the purely documentary,
artistic programs were created. In Poland, Klimczak explains, the situation
presented itself differently. Radio documentaries arose “from social need, as a
document showing the current needs of the people“. The term feature has been
used in German and English-speaking environments since the beginning of
research into the art of radio. In Poland, it is the subject of academic research,
and a topic of discussion among practitioners. As Klimczak (2011, p. 70) writes,
a feature is what “in documentaries is the most artistic, valuable and elite”.
In the Polish understanding of the genre, it is a radio documentary enriched
with creative elements, fiction, and different from the social documentary which
transmits the truth, tells the true story. This distinction also operates in Western
Europe, however, it is not as categorical: “the term feature is often used as
a synonym for radio documentary, but there is a certain difference. Although
the feature is produced in a similar manner to a documentary, it has a wider
range and a larger variety of themes” (Chatterjee, n.d.). This range is associated
with several possibilities for narrative, methods of montage and other artistic
processes. The difference between these two forms of radio expression are also
described by the radio expert Sean Street (2012, p. 4), who argues that the word
documentary suggests the journalistic origin of the genre, and is not derived
from the “impressionist world of sound, which rather plays with the facts rather
than describes them”. The feature, in Street’s view, documents the journey of its
creator, and not necessarily reality and facts.
One of the first studies of the genre was conducted by Alfred Andersch, a
German writer, author of radio plays, and radio journalist. Discussing works on
the borderline of drama and documentary, he wrote:
The term feature never refers to the content of the object; rather it describes
the way it is presented: from the making, the form, the appearance via
the facial aspect of a human, and from fashion to the special inducement
of newspapers and radio. Thus, the feature represents the form, and not
the object in itself, whereby, however, as in the appearance of a man,
sometimes the form and content are the same (Andersch, 1953, p. 95)
Andersch therefore suggests implementing this type of audio work with parallel
characteristics to feature broadcasts. The emphasis on form ensures that
exemplifications of the genre provide listeners with an aesthetic experience,

and that the program requires engagement in the role that the form plays. The
artistic values of the works are as important as the objects themselves.
In connection with the number of possibilities and formal solutions, the feature
is an internally diverse genre; the form of another genre may be chosen or
derived from, it “can cover all possible types of radio transmission. It can
possess elements of reports, documentaries, descriptions of social, psychological
and political issues. It is a form, an art, its resources are unlimited. It ranges
from journalism to poetry, from the rational description to the surreal dream”
(Andersch, 1953, p. 95).
The difficulties in defining the genre are described in the introduction to
BBC Features by the author of the publication, Laurence Gilliam (1950, p. 9),
who says that the term feature is also used by filmmakers, and for newspaper
journalists it means “everything the editor chooses to print beyond the news
and comments”. In relation to radio programmes, Gilliam defines the feature
as “programs, usually documentaries, realized by using different techniques,
usually with the use of dramatization and subject to realist montage”. Moreover,
the feature should be “an expression of the state of mind of its creator, regardless
of the techniques used”. The aim of this type of program should be to both
inform listeners and provide them with entertainment (Gilliam, 1950, p. 9).
The contemporary German documentary maker and radio producer Jens
Jarisch, defines the feature as “an audial creation allowing one to re-experience
events and the relationships between them” (Jarisch, online). For Jarisch, the
essence of the genre is its duality, where the content is documentary, but the
form is artistic. From a broader perspective, a feature may therefore consist of
everything that is audible, as well as silence (ibid.). This is in accordance with
the statement of Andersch that the resources of the feature are unrestricted. With
the possibilities of using artistic means, the number of possible subjects also
increases. The feature, as Andersch wrote, may refer to almost any problem.
The perception of feature, especially in Poland, often places it between radio
documentary and radio drama. This perspective can be called linear: from
documentary radio reportage through partially imaginary feature to fictional
radio drama. In my opinion, feature’s possibilities and resources are bigger than
this and what is more, linear thinking is limited. I would like to suggest non-
linear understanding of feature and other artistic radio genres in general.
Table 1.
Linear understanding of feature among artistic radio genres.
Own elaboration.
The planetary, non-linear arrangement presented below places feature in the

centre of the system to show that all of these kinds of realisations can affect
each other and the radio producers can be inspired by all of the forms. Planetary
thinking places feature among radio documentary, radio drama and radio
experiment. Experimental audio forms are important in general radio analysis.
Radio producers often use different narrations and montage tools; stories are
interesting due to plot and form. Planetary system shows the variety of feature
programs. What is also important is the fact that it can be developed. It is not
possible to include every artistic radio form with its varieties in the one graph.
Table 2.
Planetary understanding of artistic radio genres.
Own elaboration.
Table 3.
Planetary understanding of artistic radio
genres with broadcast examples. Own elaboration.
Documentary radio drama as Marchwicki by Michał Turowski could be another

link in the system between radio drama and radio documentary. Another
way to extend the system has to do with the genre’s varieties as poetic radio
documentary like White Contains All Other Colours by Shenja von Mannstein.
Poetic radio documentary is not a straight connection between two artistic radio
genres but that is the strength of this system that can be developed in every
possible direction without any limitations. Only this kind of understanding of
artistic radio genres can reflect their diversity typical for any kind of art.
In the description of the research methodology necessary for the analysis of
journalistic genres Maria Wojtak (2004) detailed four aspects of the genre
pattern: structural aspect, pragmatic aspect, cognitive aspect and aspect of
style. In reference to feature, I understand those components as follows:
1. The structural aspect is connected with a composition of a work, with
particular scenes, structural elements and certain – natural and created – voice
materials present in the work. It is the whole program, appropriately composed
by the author, where all the elements influence each other and constitute the
final overtone of the work. The composition of the feature is naturally different
in individual realizations and it may resemble the format of other radio genres.
Essential in this aspect are artistic values, which I perceive as the author’s
overriding aim, that their program is a work of art and has aesthetic values.
In the feature’s implementation, aesthetic acoustic solutions are not always
directly related to the category of beauty and harmony of reception, sounds
frequently used will be unpleasant for the listener, but these will be the way
to the intended artistic effect. For instance, experimental forms do not reject
antiaesthetic practices, the creators decide to induce in the recipient “aesthetic
disapproval as a component of the artistic effect” (Mukařovský, 1970, p. 77).
2. The pragmatic aspect refers to the purpose of the message, the situation of
the recipient and the sender and the illocution potential. This aspect is related
to the producer’s artistic intention or the desire to tell the story as the primary
goal of the broadcast. All features discuss a certain slice of reality and are the
programs with a documentary component, but the proportions between real
history and artistic message may be different for individual projects, which
affects the goal that the author wanted to achieve.
3. The cognitive aspect is understood as the subject of the program and the
manner of its presentation, which in artistic and documentary works will be
related to documentary elements, presenting a given piece of reality, the true
story that the author wants to tell. Regardless of fact that the feaure’s example
is perceived as artistic or experimental, feature will always convey some truth
about the world: a specific character, event, phenomenon or author’s own
story.
4. The style aspect is related to the sounds used in the work: voice materials,
acoustic kitchen, music, conscious use of silence, abstractive and natural
sounds. These components are extremely important in works as feature, where
form is as important as content. Feature uses all audible means; programs are
purely artistic realizations.
Such an understanding of particular aspects gives a complete picture of the genre
pattern of the feature, but it is important to remember facts about its variation.
As Wojtak stated “I do not treat the genre pattern as a permanent (constant)
quality or a measure of the degree of perfection of individual representations”
(Wojtak, 2004, p. 18). Particular exemplifications of the genre may take the
form similar to radio play, radio documentary or radio experiment, but it is
impossible to measure their value and closeness to perfection – for example by
the amount of voice materials or artistic means.
The contemporary feature and its subgenres

The composition of an artistic radio work, regardless of genre, consists of
content and form, but it is equally important in the feature. The form of the work
consists of all elements that help to present the story and are the artistic value
scale of the work. This includes editing, the way the program is composed along
with all editing activities: transitions between scenes, acoustic kitchen that is
the equivalent of visuality, additional acoustic effects that are not necessarily
associated with visualizing sounds, but are designed to make the work more
interesting. Producers can also provide sound metaphors, which is a kind of
audio procedure in which the author – by using it in the right context or with
some repetition – gives the sound a meaning it originally did not have.
Such treatments – in high intensity – known mainly from experimental
realizations, are used, for example, by Gregory Whitehead in the compilation
of Disorder Speech, records compilation from 1984-85. Whitehead deforms the
voice recording of the sentence If a voice like, then what? and experiments with
manual editing of tapes (Eva, can I stab bats in the cave?). These elements
are as important as the words in the recordings and should be analyzed as one
whole.
I understand the composition and structure of the work as a system of individual
scenes and sounds in the feature. In artistic radio works the arrangement of
events often differs from the way of presenting content in radio reports. The
listener is not always informed about the staging of the work (Dreaming of
fat men by Lorelei Harris), the story can be combined with the author’s dream
description (Sky Boy by Hana Walker-Brown), the show may contain fragments
of the real story, but it will not be a key element of the message (Gregory
Whitehead’s Lovely Ways to Burn) or the main character does not appear in the
work, the story is presented by the author and actress based on protocols (On the
Shore Dimly Seen by Gregory Whitehead).
Analysing the components of documentaries and fictional characteristics
in contemporary radio productions and the ways of applying both of them, I
distinguished eight types of modern feature: staged, author’s narration, direct
narrative, with elements of drama, acted, hero-author, mosaic and experimental
(Kowalska, 2019).
Table 4.
Feature’s subgenres. Own elaboration.
The author’s narrative feature is one of the more popular forms. In works of this
kind there appear the author’s narration parts. The reporter can comment on
the situation, add things, locate the action. The narrative parts are not spoken
spontaneously, but prepared well in advance by the author. This type of process
is used by Katarzyna Michalak, among others, in the programmes Mijając Ewę
(Passing Eve) and Jakiś Inny (Some others), as well as by the British creator of
radio documentaries, Hana Walker-Brown, in her radio show Bluebelle: The
Last Voyage.
Creators introducing narration to their works sometimes decide to use direct
narration – direct narrative feature. In this type of work there are also pre-
prepared narrative parts, however, they are spoken by the protagonists of the
work, not by their author. These are elements associated with the re-spoken
word. In the program My Lobotomy, dedicated by David Isay to Howard Dully,
who as a young boy underwent surgical lobotomy, it is as if the listener is carried
along Dully’s journey by the narrated parts, the program consists of narrative
statements giving rhythm to the entire story, as well as Dully’s spontaneous
conversations with other patients, their families and the son of the doctor who
carried out the treatment.
Another example of this kind of work is Man at the Beer Café by Susanne
Björkman. The author made her feature at the bar where a man was spending
his time alone. The protagonist opens himself in front of the reporter and
confides during the recording. The recording was not planned, the author
was not scheduled at the ‘Beer Cafe’ in Malmö with her interlocutor, but their
unexpected meeting resulted in an interesting program. The unusual design of
the feature consists in the fact that despite the spontaneous meeting, the man’s
monologue bears the hallmarks of a direct narration.
In his first words, the hero says: “You are a lonely man. You have few friends.
And those you have... you cannot be in touch with them, it’s impossible, that’s
the truth [...]. You have to run away somewhere, you have to go out, you cannot
always sit in the room and stare. You don’t know where you should go”. The
remark to the addressee and a coherent narrative of the statements do not
resemble spontaneous conversation. What is more, the program does not tell a
specific story, the plot does not aim at the climax, it is rather a self-portrait of a
lonely man. After fragments formulated in the second person, the protagonist
begins to express himself in the first person and he says: “I go to the beer cafe,
the people who sit there are probably half-drunk, some probably more. But
still... I have nowhere to go. I don’t have to step in between them, but I sit
down with a pint of beer and drink. I am reading a newspaper. Or something
like that”. First-person statements combine with those formulated in the second
person, the man continues: “When you sit there for quite a while, you cannot
afford a drink anymore. You know, it’s quite expensive. Then stroll back home,
at least something happened today. Yeah…”. The narrative statements of the
protagonist fulfill the phatic function of narration in the work, as the only voice
material undoubtedly also has an aesthetic role.
Creativity in radio programs with a documentary nature may also appear in
the form of staged situations. Radio documentary in its classic form does not
allow elements of fictional or “artificially” created situations; everything the
reporter records should happen naturally. But producers often decide to create
the situation or base the whole story on diaries or letters. Lorelei Harris, Irish
author of artistic radio documentary, created two features that show the way
feature can be staged.
The feature Dreaming of Fat Men was produced for the Irish station RTÉ Radio
1 in 1995 and was awarded with perhaps the most important radio award – the
Prix Italia; its author is considered to be one of the most significant, important
artists in the world of radio. Dreaming of Fat Men is a radio program with
an interesting form – an audio recording of the feast of four women was
supplemented by their statements directly into the microphone. The meeting
of the protagonists was arranged by the author, and for the duration of the feast
the radio studio was transformed into a restaurant rich in gourmet food. It is
the arranging of this meeting – and thus its staging, creating a situation – that
makes the work qualify as an example of the genre in question. The women who
were the heroines of the program would not have met spontaneously, would not
have sat down to dinner together, if it had not been for Harris inviting them to
the studio.
Another piece of Harris’s I would like to mention is Love Letters from the Front.
This program tells the love story of an English soldier and an Irish woman. Eric,
shortly after their meeting each other, was sent to the front, from where he wrote
letters to Phyllis. They exchanged about 200 letters from 1914 to 1916, when
Eric died of his injuries. The correspondence was found in a British Library
and became the basis of the show. The letters are read by actors incarnating
the roles of Phyllis and Eric, and the lines are therefore authentic, this story
really happened, but was restored by using theatrical methods. Given the fact
that the letters were not altered by the creator of the broadcast, their content
was not rewritten in the form of a script, the whole program has a documentary
character, not theatrical.
Both programmes discussed so far were therefore staged, the first, in the form
of a created situation, while the other, entirely in textual narrative, previously
written down, but not spontaneously spoken into the microphone, as in the case
of a radio documentary.
The feature is sometimes enriched, as I have already pointed out in the
introduction, by elements of drama (feature with elements of drama): such
items appear in the radio documentaries Modlitwa Zapomnianej (Forgotten
Prayer) and Złoty Chłopak (Golden Boy) by Katarzyna Michalak. In the latter,
the drama happens at the beginning, where there is a short dramatized scene
carrying the listener into the world of the work’s main protagonist, Abraham
Tuszyński. The story begins with a dialogue between two actors, for whom the
action takes place in the 1920s, a period in which Abraham Tuszyński founded
a famous cinema:
Woman: Hey, why are you not looking at the screen?
Man: Just look at their faces.
Woman: Whose?
Man: The spectators. They look completely different than in the daylight.
No one is tired, anxious, angry ...
Woman: Well they’re in the cinema.
Man: Yes, in the cinema. Only in the cinema are dreams fulfilled.
The author uses radio drama to give a voice to the main character of the
story. A similar situation occurs in a documentary telling the story of Tekla
Bądarzewskiej-Baranowska, Modlitwa Zapomnianej (Forgotten Prayer):
in dramatized scenes carrying the listener to hero’s contemporary times, the

obituary of the artist is read, a scene is also acted out where the young composer
the composer asks for an opinion on her works.
These elements enrich the message, so it has a greater influence on the
imagination of the listener. Naturally important and interesting for the audience
was also the appearance of the protagonists of the documentaries. Both works
are about people born in the nineteenth century, so the use of voice actors was
the only option.
An actor can also appear in the role of one of the protagonists, which can be
called an acted feature. In this variation of the feature, the protagonist is played
by an actor, and a common reason for the use of this form is the making of
programs about people who are dead, which was the case with Black Roses: The
Killing of Sophie Lancaster by Susan Roberts.
The actor playing the protagonist can also appear in the role of the hero in the
drama scenes. Is it an acted feature or maybe feature with elements of radio
drama with extended monologues? This double-role was present in Zygmunt
Jabłoński’s Great Network produced in Polish Radio in 1961. The distinction
between varieties in this case will be based on the rule of unity of time and
place of action. Monologues may be an extension of the stage or a separate voice
material. Thematic separateness between monologues and drama scenes creates
the mosaic composition of the work as it took place in Great Network.
The author is usually a reporter, a producer of audio works. However, it can
happen that some or all of the recordings are made by the protagonist. In the
protagonist-author feature there are recordings that have been made by the
protagonist of the work. The impetus for their creation may be the desire to
preserve certain situations, conversations or the need to create audio letters.
Letters to Butchie is a radio show in which audio letters are recorded by a mother,
Jeannie Reilly, to her son, though the author of the broadcast is David Isay. The
impetus for the recording of certain situations or words may be to transfer them
to another person. This was the case with Jeannie Reilly, the protagonist of
Letters to Butchie, a woman who abandoned her child, and the recordings – as
its title suggests – were audio letters from a mother to her son.
The hero-author features are perhaps the most intimate kind of message.
Recordings can be made completely without the participation of a reporter,
whose role in this case is to select recordings and arrange them from the right
composition. The radio producer can also provide the hero with temporary
recording equipment and only some part of the recordings will be made by
the protagonist. Another way to produce this subgenre of feature is to create a
program about the reporters themselves. An example of this type of work is The
Ground We Lived On by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc and Sarah Kramer, where the
protagonist and the author of the recordings is Adrian Nicole LeBlanc.
The creators of features including several types of fiction in a mosaic feature.
In contrast to the works referred to as experimental, the fabrications or fictional
elements do not dominate the program, rather they complete it. The mosaic
feature is a syncretic subgenre of feature. This kind of work combines several
types of varieties, which I discussed in the previous parts of this article.
Artistically advanced productions often use several types of creation, the
most common element appearing in this type of work is the author’s narrative
combined with other forms of fiction.
A work of this type is Dada à gogo by Maidon Bader. The author, in addition
to a coherent story, conveys to the listener the possibilities offered by a radio
feature: non-standard montage, the introduction of an actor and the repetition
of certain issues. All the methods used by her are intended as reflections on the
theme of the works of Dadaism.
A contemporary example of a work with an experimental nature may be Lovely
Ways to Burn produced by Gregory Whitehead in 1990 for New American
Radio. It is a ‘documentary hybrid’ (DP, 2012), in which three stories are told:
a story based on a scenario of electroconvulsive therapy, an interview with a
girl who has been burned and comments on the phenomenology of fire. The
narrative is non-linear; the stories are not told chronologically. On a number of
occasions, you can hear the song Fever. Throughout the duration of the song
you can hear the troubling sounds of electric shocks.
The whole narrative seems to be inconsistent, non-linear, the statement of a
man on the medical use of electroshock treatment is suddenly interrupted by a
few second-long recordings during which you can hear the sounds of an electric
shock and muffled cries, but Lovely Ways to Burn also tells a story. The stories
are not told in a simple, logical way, but still you can tell what the work involves.
The memories of the girl are – necessary in a documentary – a real element, and
the story about electroshock treatment was unfolded on the basis of a script. The
third component of the programme, concerning the phenomenology of fire, is
an artistic and metaphorical supplement.
I view Whitehead’s work as the ‘final’ form of this genre. In search of the limits
of the genre, I could find no programme that would have even greater artistic
and aesthetic value while maintaining a connection with reality, and thus – with
documentary.
Conclusion
On the basis of Polish radio studies and radio journalism, the term feature
is becoming more recognizable and more often used. The concept of artistic
documentary is still also applied interchangeably. Polish definitions of the

genre refer to the presence of fictitious elements, while British and American
researchers analysing and defining the genre seem to emphasize the creative
intentions of the reporter and the innovative form of programmes. The dual
definition makes it difficult to classify the genre of individual programmes.
The planetary understanding of artistic radio genres proposed by me in the first
part of the article is the result of feature’s variety. In all these forms we have to –
to use this paradoxical statement – deal with fiction in the service of truth. Truth
means full authenticity and faithful reflection of reality. However, especially
in the context of art, it often becomes a pretext for the author to tell a story or
describe their emotions, without extreme mimicry and overarching purpose in
the form of reporting a certain phenomenon.
The feature as a genre is internally very diverse. Within it there are programmes
with a significant share of fiction, or those almost identical to a radio documentary,
experimental forms, and forms which lie on the boundaries. Since in this type
of programme form is as important as content, the individual creator of the
work becomes crucial, giving shape to a true story.
The way in which the elements of fiction, both created and staged, are applied to
a work based on a real story, is a matter for individual radio creators. The feature,
located between documentary, experiment and radio drama, can approach the
form of those three genres; the proportions between the elements which are
non-fictional, imagined or staged are individual to every work.
The fictitious components that are the basis of feature’s categories discussed in
the paper, are a formal representation of the artist’s artistic composition. The
essence of the feature is the synthesis of the documentary truth, the perspective
of the author and their creative expression. Reality becomes the starting point
for creating an artistic programme where form and content are inseparably
connected. The facts triggered the imagination and become the material to
create the story. Artistic segments created by the author are no less important or
disturbing documentary messages, they are an inherent part of the feature and
can also convey the truth.
References:
Andersch, A. (1953). Versuch über des Features, ‘Fehrsehen und Rundfunk’, no. 1.
Bader, M. (Writer). (n.d.) Dada à gogo [Radio].
Björkman, S. (Writer). (n.d.) Man at the Beer Café [Radio].
Chatterjee, M. (n.d.). Radio Documentary: Slice of Life Through Sound and Silence.
Retrieved July 10, 2021 from https://www.angelfire.com/nd/nirmaldasan/
journalismonline/rd.html.
DP. (2012, August 04). Lovely ways to burn. Retrieved March 13, 2021, from http://
gregorywhitehead.net/2012/07/29/lovely-ways-to-burn/.
Gilliam, L. (1950). BBC Features, London: Evans Brother Limited.
Harris, L. (Writer). (n.d.) Dreaming of fat men [Radio].
Harris, L. (Writer). (n.d.) Love Letters from the Front [Radio].
Isay, D. (Writer). (n.d.) Letters to Butchie [Radio].
Isay, D. (Writer). (n.d.) My Lobotomy [Radio].
Jabłoński, Z. (Writer). (n.d.) Great Network [Radio].
Jarisch, J. Was ist eigentlich ein Feature? Retrieved October 4, 2014 from http://www.
yeya.de/journal/faq.
Kąkolewski, K. (1987). Wańkowicz krzepi. Wywiad-rzeka, Lublin: Lubelskie
Publishing.
Klimczak, K., (2011). Reportaże radiowe o krzywdzie i cierpieniu. Łódź: Primum
Verbum.
Kowalska, N. (2019). Forma i treść. Polski i zagraniczny feature radiowy oraz jego
odmiany gatunkowe. Łódź: University of Lodz Publishing.
LeBlanc, A. N., & Kramer, S. (Writers). (n.d.) The Ground We Lived On [Radio].
Michalak, K. (Writer). (n.d.) Jakiś Inny (Some others) [Radio].
Michalak, K. (Writer). (n.d.) Mijając Ewę (Passing Eve) [Radio].
Michalak, K. (Writer). (n.d.) Modlitwa Zapomnianej (Forgotten Prayer) [Radio].
Michalak, K. (Writer). (n.d.) Złoty Chłopak (Golden Boy) [Radio].
Mukařovský, J. (1970). Wśród znaków i struktur, Warsaw: Państwowy Instytut
Wydawniczy.
Roberts, S. (Writer). (n.d.) Black roses: The Killing of Sophie Lancaster [Radio].
Street, S. (2012). The poetry of radio: The colour of sound. London: Routledge.
Turowski, M. (Writer). (n.d.). Marchwicki [Radio].
von Mannstein, S. (Writer). (n.d.) White Contains All Other Colours [Radio].
Walker-Brown, H. (Writer). (n.d.) Bluebelle: The Last Voyage [Radio].
Walker-Brown, H. (Writer). (n.d.) Sky Boy [Radio].
Whitehead, G. (Writer). (n.d.) Disorder Speech [Radio].
Whitehead, G. (Writer). (n.d.) Lovely Ways to Burn [Radio].
Whitehead, G. (Writer). (n.d.) On the Shore Dimly Seen [Radio].
Wojtak, M. (2004). Press journalism genres. Lublin: Maria Curie-Skłodowska
University Publishing.
TRANSLATORS’ DILEMMAS IN TRANSLATING POETRY:

THE CASE OF GANE TODOROVSKI’S POETRY IN ENGLISH
Silvana Neshkovska1, Sonja Kitanovska-Kimovska2,
Daniela Andonovska-Trajkovska3
1, 3
Faculty of Education, “St. Kliment Ohridski” University, Bitola, Republic of North Macedonia
2
Faculty of Philology, “Ss. Cyril and Methodius” University, Skopje, Republic of North Macedonia
Abstract: Poetry translation is considered the most challenging type of translation.

Translators are faced with many dilemmas as they work on several different levels
simultaneously in an attempt to preserve in the target language as many features of
a particular poem as possible. This is not an easily achievable aim, especially, if the
poems are products of a poetic mastermind who skilfully juggled with a range of poetic
features.
The study at hand aims to analyse the treatment that the poetry of one such poetic
genius, Gane Todorovski, received when rendered from Macedonian into English.
More precisely, given the profound differences between Macedonian and English, the
study investigates how specific poetic features such as rhyme, rhythm, sound, tropes,
word choice and word order have been handled in the translation. It also tries to
provide answers to several common translators’ dilemmas that obligatorily emerge in
the process of poetry translation.
The study shows that the translators of Gane Todorovski’s poetry have been fully aware
of the poetic qualities of the original poems and have made every effort to preserve
them in the translation, although some losses were practically unavoidable.
Key words: translation, poetry, lexis, tropes, rhyme
__________________________
Corresponding author: Dr. Silvana Neshkovska is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Education –
Bitola, St. Kliment Ohridski University - Bitola. She teaches a number of courses in English linguistics
such as Syntax, Pragmatics, Contrastive Analysis and Phonetics and Phonology as well as Translation,
at the Department of Macedonian and Other Foreign Languages. Her main research interests lie in the
field of pragmatics, contrastive analysis, English language teaching and translation. She has published a
number of research paper in various domestic and foreign scientific journals.
e-mail: silvana.neskovska@uklo.edu.mk ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4417-7783
*Other authors’s notes at the end
Copyright © 2021 Silvana Neshkovska, Sonja Kitanovska-Kimovska, Daniela Andonovska-Trajkovska
Article history: Received: 6 December 2020; Reviewed: 10 February 2021; Revised: 16 March 2021;
Citation (APA): Neshkovska, S., Kitanovska-Kimovska, S., & Andonovska-Trajkovska, D. (2021).
Translators’ dilemmas in translating poetry: The case of Gane Todorovski’s poetry in English. Studies in
Linguistics, Culture, and FLT, 9(1), 21-39. doi: 10.46687/SILC.2021.v09i01.002.
Introduction
Poetry is one of the most intricate literary genres. Its uniqueness stems from
the delicate web of a number of distinct features such as sound, lexis, marked/
condensed syntax, poetic imagery, tropes, rhyme, rhythm, etc., intended to
challenge the readers’ senses; to invoke powerful images in their mind; to
elevate their spirit; to provoke them to experience strong emotions; to inspire
them, as well as to delight them.
Or as Jones (2011, pp. 1-2) put it:
…poems typically have one or more of the following features: they use
‘marked’ language; they have some type of regular linguistic patterning;
they exploit the sounds, semantic nuances or associations of words, and not
just semantic meanings; they convey meanings beyond the ‘propositional
content’ (i.e. the surface semantics) of the words and grammar; they can
give intense emotional, spiritual or philosophical experience to their
readers and listeners; and they have high social and cultural status.
The process of writing poetry has always been accompanied by another equally
important process – translation of poetry. Translating poetry, in fact, has been
a universally accepted practice for more than 2000 years. The work of poetry
translators is complex and wide-ranging, but it has rich real-world effects too
(Jones, 2011, p. 4). Thus, poetry translation has established itself as a noble act
with which numerous masterfully written poems have been made accessible
to new audiences. As a consequence, it has contributed to the enrichment of
world literatures and it can even be credited with bringing distinct cultures
closer together. Evidently, poetry translation helps not just the source-language
community to assert itself internationally, but it also benefits the receptor culture,
as it serves as a means of revitalizing one’s own poetry (Mao, 1922/2004 in
Jones, 2011, p. 7).
Poetry translation necessitates working on several levels simultaneously –
phonological, lexical, semantic, syntactic, literary or aesthetic, and cultural –
with the aim of retaining the same emotions and the same invisible message
and, as a result, eventually, achieving the same effect in the TL as in the SL
(Arsova-Nikolikj, 1999).
The general belief is that in order to deal with the complicated task of poetry
translation translators need to be poets themselves, or at the very least, they
should have a deep poetic sensitivity and immense appreciation of poetry
(Landers, 2001). Poetry translators are typically concerned with interpreting
the different layers of meaning of a source poem; relaying this interpretation
reliably, and/or “creating a poem in the target language which is readable and
enjoyable in its own right, with merit as an independent, literary text” (Phillips,
2001, pp. 23-24; Boase-Beier, 2004, pp. 25-26; Lefevere, 1975; Honig, 1985, p.
177; Flynn, 2004, pp. 281-282; Jones, 2006a in Jones, 2011, p. 3). Proficiency
in the target and source language and culture is a core requirement for poetry
translators. Moreover, close familiarity with all poetic intricacies and delicacies
is mandatory for all who set out to translate poetry. Bennani (2011, p. 136)
provides a neat description of the basic requirements that translators should
meet in order to translate poetry successfully:
The translator of poetry must be fluent in and sensitive to the source
language; he must know the source language’s cultural matrices, its
etymologies, syntax, and grammar, as well as its poetic tradition. He
must culturally and politically identify himself wholeheartedly with
the original poet. He must penetrate the exteriority of the original text
and lose himself in its intertextuality. To make the translation become
a poem, the translator must also meet successfully the expectations and
sensibilities of the poetic tradition of the target language. Thus, the most
successful translators of poetry are frequently those who happen to be
bilingual and bicultural and, above all, poets in the target Language.
Bearing this in mind, it seems quite reasonable to infer that the task of translators
is sometimes harder than that of poets – while the poet creates, the translator
recreates and his choices are “limited and dictated by someone else whose
priorities were self-imposed” (Bennett, 2001, p. 3).
The aim of this study is to discuss the translation of Gane Todorovski’s poetry
into English. For the purposes of this study, two poems from his collection of
translated poems in English (Todorovski, 1976) were subjected to a detailed
analysis. The translated poems were studied alongside with their original
Macedonian counterparts. The analysis focuses on the following poetic
features: rhyme, rhythm, sound (alliteration, consonance, assonance, etc.),
tropes (metaphors, simile, hyperbole, personification, etc.), lexis (culture
specific terms, neologisms and archaisms), and word order. The purpose was to
determine how these have been handled in the translation, given the profound
differences between Macedonian and English.
Theoretical background
Is poetry translation possible?

Translation theorists still cannot reach a consensus on whether translation
of poetry is a possible or impossible undertaking. Those who view it as an
“impossible task” claim that poetry is “what is lost in the translation” (Frost,
1969 in Dastjerdi et. al, 2008) and call it “the art of the impossible” (Landers,
2001). The “untranslatability” of poetry is attributed to the impossibility to
recreate an exact replica of the original poem in a different language. Namely,
due to linguistic and cultural differences, poetry ‘suffers’ inevitable distortions

in lexis, sense, syntax, sound, structure, etc., when rendered into the target
language, and, in most cases, ends up either in a compressed or expanded form
(Lefevere, 1975, p. 384).
Conversely, the proponents of the opposite stance insist that all barriers in
poetry translation can be adequately addressed (Arsova-Nikolikj, 1999, p. 244).
They acknowledge that some aspects of a poem may be lost in the process of
translation, but still that should not avert translators from translating the poem.
In that respect, the process of poetry translation is sometimes compared to a
bowl of water which if “moved from sink to table, some water may spill and
be lost”; however, the goal of the translator should be “to keep as much water
in the bowl as possible” (Bennett, 2001, p. 1). Some even go further and argue
that there is nothing really “lost” in poetry translation; on the contrary, there
is always something “gained” by the birth of a text which will not merely be a
replica of the original but will have the ability to achieve a sort of equivalence to
the source language text (Benjamin, 1968, p. 76 in Tisgam, 2014).
Major problems in translating poetry

The translation of poetry from the source to the target language and culture
entails a transfer of a long list of features intrinsic to poetry. According to
Kjulavkova (1989), the figurative features of poetry are marked by the use of
three types of stylistic devices: phono-morphological (assonance, alliteration,
onomatopoeia, parallelisms like anaphora, epiphora, etc.), syntactic (inversion,
ellipsis, asyndeton, polysyndeton, etc.) and semantic (metaphor, personification,
allegory, epithet, etc.). In addition, there are the versification features such as
rhyme, rhythm, number of stanzas, number of lines per stanza, etc., as well as
the choice of lexis. These will be briefly discussed in this section from the point
of view of the challenges they present for the translator.
Sound is one of the crucial aesthetic factors in poetry, but, at the same time, it can
be extremely troublesome. The sound aspect of poetry subsumes combinations
of sounds that generate sound effects known as assonance, consonance,
alliteration, onomatopoeia, etc. The translator’s task is to retain these sound-
related features of poems in the translated texts as much as possible. However,
translation practice shows that since the semantic value of a poem is normally
considered cardinal, in most cases, the importance of sound is diminished
and sound is sacrificed in the translation process (Newmark, 1981). The only
exception is made when the entire beauty of the poem is deemed to lie in the
sound effects, and in such circumstances, the translator is bound to preserve
them regardless the cost.
The unusual or marked word order is yet another intrinsic feature of poetry
which contributes to the creation of meaning of poems. The inversion as well as
the repetition of certain words, phrases, and even entire sentences is a frequent
phenomenon in poetry (Arsova-Nikolikj, 1999, p. 243), and should be adequately
dealt with in the translation as failure to do so could trigger loss in both the
meaning and the aesthetic value of the poem.
The soul of poetry lies in the use of figurative language, or the so-called
metaphorical mode of expression that transcends traditional semantic limitations
of language (Landers, 2001). Figurative language gives rise to ambiguity and
polysemy; this, in turn, leads to many possible layers of interpretation. For
translators to render metaphors, similes, personification, hyperbole, etc., in the
target language can be particularly tricky, as these too are often language- or
culture-specific. The choice then is either to find a trope in the target language
that conveys an equivalent meaning or feeling, or to translate it in a way that
allows the reader to see the same correlation between the components of the
original trope, and the images contained in it (Creativeblogger, 2016).
Rhyme is another aspect of poetry that very frequently presents translators with
“unsurmountable” obstacles. Intended to bind lines together in stanzas, and to
help in organizing the structure of the poem (Arsova-Nikolikj, 1999, p. 243),
rhyme presents translators with a double challenge – to find rhyming words in
the target language to replace the ones used in the source text, and, at the same
time, to preserve the same semantic meaning of the words. Translation practice
shows that almost any attempt to preserve the rhyme pattern of the original is
bound to trigger certain alterations in terms of the number/gender of nouns;
word class; word order; or even the choice of lexis (Arsova-Nikolikj, 1999, p.
248).
Another important aspect of poetry is rhythm, i.e. the interchangeable use
of stressed and unstressed syllables per line (Arsova-Nikolikj, 1999, p. 243).
Reproducing the same rhythmical pattern or meter in the translated text can
be extremely challenging as in each language, the accent, number or length
of syllables in words vary to a certain extent. Hence, the consensus reached
among scholars is that the poetry should be translated in the rhythmical pattern
acceptable in the target language, not in the rhythmical pattern used in the
original poem which is typical of poetry writing in the source language.
Finally, the choice of lexis is also of paramount importance in poetry as
it is marked by a frequent usage of peculiar lexemes such as archaisms or
neologisms (Arsova-Nikolikj, 1999, p. 243). It is sometimes difficult to preserve
these in the target text, and that, in turn, affects the beauty and the form of
the translation (Tisgam, 2014). Poetry translators often struggle hard with
culture-bound words or expressions which present yet another common décor
of numerous poems (Jafari & Karimnia, 2015). In translating culture-bound
words and expressions, they may choose from a wide range of procedures:
literal translation, transference, naturalization, cultural equivalent, functional
equivalent, description equivalent, classifier, componential analysis, deletion,

couplets, notes, addition, glosses, reduction, and synonymy (Newmark, 1988).
Translation methods used in poetry translation

Although poetry translation is frequently compared to “an unanalysed black
box”, Lefevere (1992) identified a number of translation methods which poetry
translators have at their disposal depending on what their priority is. These
include phonological translation, literal translation, rhythmic translation,
translation into prose, translation into rhymed poetry, translation into poetry
without rhyme (blank verse), and interpretive translation. Lefevere points to the
fact that in the past the most prevalent method was translating rhymed poetry;
in contemporary times, however, poetry is commonly translated into prose, as
translators are more concerned with the meaning than with the other poetic
aspects.
Nevertheless, practice shows that the final versions of translated poems rarely
fall into one of the archetypes proposed by Lefevere, as translated poems are
usually hybrid in nature (Jones, 2011). A relevant point to be mentioned in this
context is that the choice of the translation method/s, to a great extent, depends
on what the target audience expects and regards as poetry (Landers, 2001).
Translator’s dilemmas
Confronted with such a wide range of challenges and possibilities for the
selection of a translation method, according to Savory (1957 in Popovska, 2004,
p. 25) the translator faces six dilemmas:
1. Should translation give the words of the original or should translation
give the ideas of the original?
2. Should translation read like an original work or should translation read
like a translation?
3. Should translation reflect the style of the original or should translation
reflect the style of the translator?
4. Should translation read as a contemporary of the original or should
translation read as a contemporary of the translator?
5. May translation add to or omit from the original or translation may
never add to or omit from the original?
6. Should verse lines be translated in prose or should verse lines be
translated in verse?
In this paper we will try to see how these dilemmas have been resolved in the
poems under study.
Purpose and methodology
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to provide an analysis of the translations of Gane
Todovorski’s poems into English in order to see how the translators have solved
the challenges posed by the various poetic features of Todorovski’s poetry. The
key question of the study is how the translators have solved the thorny dilemmas
of poetry translation given the significant linguistic, cultural and historical gaps
between the source and the target language.
Sample
The study is based on two poems from Gane Todorovski’s Poems collection,
published in England in 1976 and translated by Ljubica Todorova-Janešlieva
and Graham Reid: “Љубовна” (Ljubovna), originally published in 1964, and its
translation “Love Song”, and “Во доцна пролет кон Нерези” (Vo docna prolet
kon Nerezi), originally published in 1956, and its translation “Towards Nerezi
in late spring” (see Appendix).
These two poems were selected, first and foremost, for the translation
challenges they offer. The former is a lyrical love poem with a very neat and
precise versification, with a clear structure of stanzas and rhyme scheme. It also
makes extensive use of metaphorical language, including metaphor, simile and
personification. The latter, a patriotic poem in which the poet celebrates certain
aspects of his/her homeland, is challenging on the lexical plane. It is marked with
a truly ingenuous language use with a range of neologisms and archaisms. In
short, the selection of these poems is made based on the poetic features they are
characterized with: rhyme, rhythm, sound (alliteration, consonance, assonance,
etc.), tropes (metaphors, simile, hyperbole, personification, etc.), lexis (culture
specific terms, neologisms and archaisms), and word order. Given the linguistic
and cultural differences between English and Macedonian, the aim of the study
is to analyze how the translators have handled these “troublesome” poetic
features when transferring them from Macedonian into English, i.e. what they
have sacrificed and what they have managed to preserve in the translation.
Methodology
Our research follows Popovska’s analysis approach (2004, pp. 8-9). First,
we provide a short analysis of the original text and its significance. Then we
provide a selected, but thorough comparison between the original and the
translation, putting special emphasis on the differences. Finally, we analyse the
effect achieved in terms of what is gained and what is lost and comment on the
translation as a whole.
The research is limited to the two poems mentioned above because it is solely
qualitatively oriented without any quantitative pretensions. Nevertheless,
despite its limited scope, the detailed analysis and the findings are sufficiently
indicative of the overall translation approach employed by the translators in
dealing with the translational challenges.
Analysis and results
Gane Todorovski’s poetry

Gane Todorovski (1929-2010) is a Macedonian poet, translator, professor,
essayist, literary critic, historian and publicist. He belongs to the third generation
of Macedonian poets and writers. He authored 10 collections of poems, 7
publications of literary studies and criticism and many publicist writings. His
poetic code is specific and recognizable due to his neo-archaisms (“Todorovski
turns to the spoken language, to the vernacular, in order to renew the lexis in
his poetry” (Blaze Koneski in Vangelov, 1993, p. 72)) and neologisms, rhyme
and rhythm, metaphorical epithet, assonance, alliteration and paronomasia, but
also due to his love, patriotic and metapoetic motifs which are embodied in
naturalistic, highly aesthetic descriptions, frequent apostrophes and rhetorical
questions. Todorovski’s lyric elements are “fluid, metaphorically enigmatic
and have clear significations of existential drama” (Drugovac, 1990, p. 58).
According to Gjurchinov, Todorovski makes the greatest impression with his
linguistic filigree skills: “…his linguistic filigree skills have reached perfection
expressing all the ranges of trembling, mellifluous, fragile poetic melody”
(Gjurchinov, 1983, p. 84). A number of well-known literary critics have written
about him including Miodrag Drugovac (2006, pp. 351-354), Atanas Vangelov
(1993), Milan Gjurchinov (2006, pp. 355-360), Branko Varoshlija (2006, pp.
365-368), Gjeorgji Stardelov (2006, pp. 377-380), Vele Smilevski (2006, pp.
387-390), Rade Siljan (2006, pp. 13-28), Luan Starova (2006, pp. 379-393), Ante
Popovski (2006, pp. 381-383), Paskal Gilevski (2006, pp. 573-579), to name but
a few. Gane Todovorski’s poetry has been translated into English and other
foreign languages.
Analysis of “Love Song” vs. “Ljubovna”

As the title of the poem suggests, the poet dedicates this poem to his beloved,
i.e. to the feeling of love he and his lover cherish towards each other. In the
entire poem this feeling of love or the poet’s infatuation is metaphorically
compared to a river. More specifically, just like a river, whose water supply
changes throughout the year across the different seasons, their love also has its
own swings – at one point it is strong and intense, but then, for some reason,
it withdraws and is gone for a while. The poet is clearly not destitute because
of this changeable state of their love; in fact, he is so positive about their love
that he describes it as “endless”, and as a story without an end, i.e. without an
epilogue.
As to the sound effects, some of the lines in the original are marked for alliteration
(repetition of the initial consonant sound). In the translation the alliteration is
mostly lost (e.g. 1); although, some attempts to compensate for that loss via
alternative sounds and sound effects are noted (e.g. 2, e.g. 3). Example 1 also
displays paronomasia with similar-sounding words, which is not preserved in
the translation.
e.g. 1 та палави и плави And romps and flood
e.g. 2 Догледање! До прва пролет! Farewell! Till the coming spring!
e.g. 3 што мени лика лете which alters its appearance in summer
Regarding the word order, due to the significant differences between English
and Macedonian syntax, the word order in the translated text is partly altered
(e.g. 4, e.g. 5, e.g. 6).
e.g. 4 Епилог нашата драма нема Our story lacks an epilogue
e.g. 5 што едно влече, друго носи, which takes one thing away and brings another
e.g. 6 та, како питач капка проси beggar-like it craves a drop
In the examples above extracted from the original poem, the object is displaced
from its usual position, which is after the verb. Since the emphasis is placed on
the object, these sentences are marked syntactically and, hence, stylistically.
Although this same movement (‘topicalization’) is possible in English, still it is
not applied in the translation of this poem. The translators obviously preferred to
observe the regular SVOCA rule instead, according to which the object comes
immediately after the verb.
Another visible difference was detected in relation to the subject. Namely, in
Macedonian, the subject can be omitted as the information it carries regarding
the doer of the action is encoded in the verb itself via a suffix attached to the
verb. The poet clearly opted for this option in some of his lines. In the English
translation, however, the subject is overtly stated, as subjectless sentences are
practically impossible in English even in the realm of poetry where the syntactic
rules could be much more easily bent and disrespected (see e.g. 7).
e.g. 7 кога сме најмногу здрави! when we are in the best of health!
The figurative language use in the poem is marked by an underlying ‘river’

metaphor with which the poet’s love/lover is compared to a river, which, at one
point, is completely dry that it begs for a drop of water, and, then, at another
point, it is noisy and full of water, ready to overflow (e.g. 8). The ‘river’ metaphor
is completely retained in the translation as well.
e.g. 8 Таа е бучна, кога е полна, When full it is full of noise

та палави и плави – And romps and flood –
таква е нашата љубов: болна Such is our love: ailing
The poet upholds the overarching ‘river’ metaphor with several instances of simile
which are also neatly preserved in the translated text (e.g. 9, e.g. 10, e.g. 11).
e.g. 9 Епилог нашата драма нема, our story lacks an epilogue
таа е бескрај, ко река it is endless as the river is
e.g. 10 тa, како питач капка проси and beggar-like it craves a drop
e.g. 11 Ќе дотрчаш ко река, You will come running like a river

за да оживееш опустен голет, Bringing life to the bare hillside
дарежна, топла, мека... Generous, warm ad soft …
Speaking of the figurative language used, apart from the abovementioned

metaphors and similes, the author uses personification as well. Namely, by
stating that their love is ailing, the poet evidently ascribes human-like features
to their inconstant love (see e.g. 8). Generally, the personification is preserved
in the translation, apart from example 3, where the translators have opted for the
word “appearance” rather than “face”.
In terms of its versification features, the original poem comprises four stanzas,
i.e. four quatrains, and has a very neat and regular ABAB rhyme pattern. In the
English translation, the four quatrain scheme is preserved; however, the rhyme
is completely lost. Evidently, for the translators it was much more salient to
preserve the semantic content of the poem than to replicate the rhyme pattern.
Regarding the rhythm, the original and the translation have different rhythmical
patterns, as illustrated by e.g. 8. Whereas the original meter is: dactyl, trochee,
dactyl, trochee/secundus paeon, amphibrach/ dactyl, dactyl, trochee, trochee; the
translation of the same verse lines displays the following meter: iamb, anapest,
iamb/iamb, iamb/ trochee, trochee, spondee. This may be reasonably expected
in view of the differences between English and Macedonian pronunciation and
stress distribution.
As far as the word choice is concerned, there is a clear attempt on the part of
the translators to achieve almost complete faithfulness. Still, in the translated
text, few instances of lexical “infidelity” emerge. Thus, for example, there is
no doubt that the use of the word “драма” (drama/play) in the original poem
was purposefully selected, as “drama” is frequently used in the context of
love relationships, especially, when things between the love partners go sour
and they do irrational things. In this case it is used to allude to the changeable
nature of their love, which is marked by ups and downs – happy moments and
disappointments. For some reason, the translators decided to downplay this
specific allusion and replaced the word “drama” with a more neutral term,
“story”. Then, the verb “проси” (to beg), in the English translation is rendered
as “crave”, a verb that carries a completely different semantic load and evokes
a completely different imagery than its original counterpart. Similarly, the

verb “влече” (to drag) is rendered as “takes away”. This word choice in the
translation distorts slightly the original meaning and poetic imagery as well,
because dragging implies using force and trying to control someone/something
that opposes that force; whereas, the phrasal verb “take away” simply implies
removing, i.e. displacing someone/something from its original position.
Speaking of word choice, Gane Todorovski is well known for his creative
language use, i.e. for the frequent recourse to both archaisms and neologisms. In
this specific poem, two instances of neologisms were detected. These are the verb
“палави” which is, in fact, a result of the word formation process of conversion
since the word already exists in Macedonian as an adjective meaning “naughty”.
In this context, the verb “палави” has found a perfect counterpart in the English
verb “romp”. The other instance of a neologism is the noun “голет”, used to
refer to a hillside which is barren or completely deforested. The noun “голет”
is clearly derived by means of the word formation process of derivation, where
the adjective “гол”, meaning “nude/naked”, is taken as a root to which the suffix
“ет” is added. In the English translation, a neutral term, “bare hillside”, is used
in its stead, which clearly lacks the peculiarity of the original expression. Тhe
verb “мени” (to change), on the other hand, illustrates the author’s inclination
towards using archaic words. In the contemporary Macedonian language, this
verb is completely substituted by a similar verb, “менува”. The same is the
case with the noun “лете” (summer) which is used in the poem instead of its
standard Macedonian equivalent - “лето”. These nuances are not rendered in
the translation.
Analysis of “Vo docna prolet kon Nerezi” vs.

“Towards Nerezi in late spring”
In this poem, the poet depicts the landscape of a beautiful site suitable for
relaxation called Nerezi, located near the capital city – Skopje. He provides
a picturesque description of the hilly terrain as well as the view it provides of
the plain and the capital city below. Apart from the description of the beautiful
nature, the poet widens the scope of the poem and inserts subtle references to
certain social aspects related to that place. In fact, he briefly hints at its historic
past, and, then, brings to the forefront contemporary aspects related the local
inhabitants and their way of life.
This poem does not abound with sound effects. Our analysis has identified
only two instances of alliteration (e.g. 12 and 13 below) and one instance of
assonance (e.g. 12 on the vowel “o”). The translators have managed to preserve
the alliteration although in a slightly different fashion, whereas the assonance
has not been preserved.
As far as the eye can see: bread-bearing fields

e.g. 12 На дофат поглед околу: засевки лебородни
And in short stretches, vineyards, vineyards,
и мали простирки лозја, лозја, лозја.
vineyards.
e.g. 13 Крај патот што ластареше: бресја, бојлии, By the branching road majestic elms,
по патот: брзоодица On the road itself swift steps.
As far as the word order is concerned, since the style of the poet in this specific
poem is rather narrative and prose-like, the lines are run-on-lines (not end-stop-
lines) and the usual SVOCA word order prevails in the poem. The translators
evidently did not have any major problems in preserving that aspect almost
completely in the translated text (e.g. 14). Even though in e.g. 14 the subject is
omitted in the original (which, as mentioned previously, is a permissible and
legitimate move in Macedonian), in the translation, in accordance with the
English grammar rules, the subject is overtly stated.
e.g.14 Го пресртнуваме забрзано поточето We happen on the hurrying brook,
Due to the narrative style of the poem, however, occasionally the accent in the
original was placed on the information encoded in the adjunct, and, consequently,
the adjunct was placed in sentence initial position. Again that same tendency
was reflected in the translation too (e.g. 15).
e.g. 15 Најчесто, токму што се разденило, Often enough just as day dawns
ја искачуваме оваа нагорнина. we climb this slope.
One interesting finding to be highlighted is that some of the sentences in the

original poem were marked with a completely atypical syntax. More precisely,
apart from the marked word order, these sentences also contained ellipsis on the
verb and displayed repetition of certain words (e.g. 16, e.g. 17). The terseness of
expression in these sentences was observed in the English version of the poem
as well.
e.g. 16 На дофат поглед околу: засевки As far as the eye can see: bread-bearing fields
лебородни And in short stretches, vineyards, vineyards,
и мали простирки лозја, лозја, лозја. vineyards.
e.g. 17 Крај патот што ластареше: By the branching road majestic elms,
бресја, бојлии,
по патот: брзоодица. On the road itself swift steps.
Although the author’s style as to the syntactic structure of sentences is clearly

respected to a great extent in the translation, still few instances were spotted
where the word order suffers major alterations in the translation (e.g. 18, e.g.
19). Thus, in e.g. 18, in the original poem the object is displaced and comes
before the verb, whereas in the translated text the object comes after the verb
and follows the regular SVOCA pattern in English. Moreover, the word order of
the two adjuncts (“given over to gossip” and “under the chestnut trees”) is also
changed in the translation probably in an attempt to achieve greater naturalness
in English. Example 20 also shows differences in grammatical voice. In the
Macedonian original “Skopje” is the receiver of the action (“го пржат”), where
the passive object implies that Skopje is powerless and cannot respond, but bear
the heat. The English translation gives it an active role (“broils”), which may be
interpreted as if the action is intentional.
e.g. 18 Жените веленца постилаат The women spread their woollen rugs
под коштаните, веќе зазборени. Given over to gossip under the chestnut trees.
hospitable hillocks of green come to meet us
e.g. 19 в пресрет; нерамнини пречекливо зеленило
e.g. 20 По некој поглед надолу лунѕа, The casual glance strays down,
надолу в полето, Down to the plain below
каде што Скопје го пржат горештините. where Skopje broils in the summer heat.
Due to the narrative and fact-stating descriptive style which predominates in
the poem, the use of figurative language is rather scarce. Apart from several
instances of personification, with which human-like features are ascribed to the
landscape described in the poem, no other figures of speech have been traced.
Thus, the hill has a hunched back just like a human being; the greenery on the
hill is hospitable; the brook is in a hurry; the visitor’s gaze wonders around,
whereas the scorching heat has cooking skills and is frying the capital city (e.g.
21, e.g. 22, e.g. 23). All these instances of personification are neatly preserved
in the translation as well.
e.g. 21 Ридот со благи грпки лулее чекори морни, This hill’s gentle hummocks cradle wearied feet,
в пресрет; нерамнини пречекливо зеленило hospitable hillocks of green come to meet us.
e.g. 22 Го пресртнуваме забрзано поточето, We happen on the hurrying brook,
e.g. 23 По некој поглед надолу лунѕа, The casual glance strays down,
надолу в полето, Down to the plain below
каде што Скопје го пржат горештините. where Skopje broils in the summer heat.
With regard to the versification features, this poem consists of 5 stanzas but
does not follow any strict stanza scheme as the number of lines per stanza
varies, with the shortest stanza being composed of three and the longest of five
lines. This free stanza pattern is followed closely in the English translation, too.
The original poem is not rhymed; consequently, the translation lacks rhyme as
well. As for the rhythm, the original and the translation are marked by different
metrical patterns. As example 21 shows, the Macedonian original meter is
trochee, amphibrach, trochee, trochee, dactyl, trochee; whereas in the translation
the meter is: amphibrach, secunduc paeon, secunduc paeon, secunduc paeon.
What makes this poem particularly challenging, though, in terms of translation
is word choice. The poem abounds with culture-specific terms referring to: a
past ruler whose name, “Султан Суи”, is associated with the site described
in the poem; a community of people who inhabit this place called “торбеши”
(Macedonians who during the Turkish rule accepted the Islam and converted
to Muslims); “Св. Петка”, a name of a village nearby, named after the saint, St.
Petka; “веленца”, a specific type of rugs woven on a loom, and “матеница”,
a type of homemade yoghurt that the locals made and sold in the capital. The
translators adopted a variety of procedures in dealing with these culture-specific
terms. Thus, in the case of “Sultain-sui” they opted for borrowing the term; the
same is the case with the other proper noun, i.e. the name of the village, St.
Petka; the term “торбеши” is translated by means of a neutral and general term
– “peasants”; whereas, “веленца” (woollen rugs) and “матеница” (curds and
sour milk) are both rendered in English by means of a brief description.
The original also abounds in an impressive number of neologisms, derived from
already existing words. These include the following: “лулее” (which comes from
the verb “лула” – “to swing”); “морни” (derived from the adjective “уморни”
– “tired”); “засевки” (stems from the noun “посеви” – “fields planted with
crops”); “лебородни” (a noun derived by blending the noun “леб” and the
adjective “родни”); “ластареше” (a verb derived by means of conversion of
the noun “ластар” which corresponds with the English “young branch/twig”);
“доброутрата” (a noun coined by blending the two words that comprise the
salutation “good morning”); “лунза” (a verb most probably derived from the
verb “лута”, which means to “wander aimlessly about”), “простирки” (a noun
derived by conversion of the verb “простира” which means “to stretch”),
“брзоодица” (a noun derived by blending the adverb “брзо” and the verb
“оди”, meaning “fast walking”) and “часипол” (a compound noun derived by
blending the components of the time expression “час и полoвина”, meaning
“an hour and a half”). For some of these neologisms, the translators managed to
find alternative means to successfully transfer them in the target language while
preserving their peculiarity at the same time. Thus, the alliteration in “swift
steps” is used to compensate for the lack of a suitable compound substitute
in English for “брзоодица”; the archaic phrase “bid good morrow” is used to
replace in English the newly coined Macedonian noun “доброутрата”; then, for
“засевки лебородни” the translators tried to come up with a similar phrase in
English, both in form and in meaning, “bread-bearing fields”; and an archaism
is used in the case of “морни” - “wearied”. However, the translators have not
“saved” the peculiarity of all the neologisms and for some they opted for an easy
way out and chose a rather literal translation. Thus, for instance, the compound
noun “часипол” is rendered as “an hour and a half”; “лунза” as “strays”;
“простирки” as “stretches”; “ластареше” as “branching”, etc.
Finally, the complexity of the lexis used is further illustrated by instances of
archaic words – “бојлии” (an adjective borrowed from Turkish, meaning “tall”),
rendered in the translated text as “majestic”, and colloquial terms, presumably,
included to add to the local colour, so vividly and masterfully depicted in the
poem – “коштани” (chestnuts) and “слагаат” (to descend), whose standard
Macedonian counterpart are “костени” and “слегуваат”, respectively. The fact
that, in the translated text, these terms are rendered with their standard English
equivalents, obviously, implies that some subtle nuances of this richly nuanced
poem are inevitably lost because of that.
Conclusion
This paper set out to investigate how translators have dealt with the intrinsic
difficulties of poetry translation on a set of Macedonian poems by Gane
Todorovski and their English counterparts. The questions posed by the study
were how the translators managed to transfer the specific poetic features of
Todorovski’s poetry and how they resolved the typical translators’ dilemmas.
With regard to the first question, the analysis of the two poems and their
translations shows that the translators have been fully aware of the poetic qualities
of the original and have made every effort to preserve them in the translation. In
the case of the first poem, where versification and semantic features prevail, the
analysis demonstrated that the dominant translation approach was to keep the
content before the form. Whereas the translators have preserved as many poetic
features as they were able to, still, when faced with the choice between form
and meaning, they opted for meaning. In the case of the second poem, which is
rich in lexical stylistic features, the analysis shows that the translators had the
difficult task of transferring the lexical richness of the Macedonian original.
Here, too, they demonstrated a strong awareness about the challenges of the
original and a tendency to convey the lexical qualities of the Macedonian poet
to the English audience, which was more successful at times and less successful
at others.
Based on the analysis, we can draw the following conclusions about how the
translators resolved their dilemmas. With regard to the first dilemma of whether
to translate the words of the original or the ideas of the original, there is a
tendency to preserve the words of the original, which at times helps preserving
the ideas of the original, too. At other times, preserving the words does not
necessarily lead to preserving the ideas. The second dilemma of whether the
translation should read as an original work or as a translation is resolved at the
end of the latter. The translations in most respects read as translations. Regarding
the third dilemma of whether the translation reflects the style of the original
or the style of the translator, our analysis demonstrated that the translations
mostly follow the style of the original. As for the fourth dilemma of whether
the translation reads as contemporary of the original or contemporary of the
translator, we can say that it is not relevant for the poems analysed as the time
difference between the originals and their translations is rather small for us to
expect any large discrepancies. When it comes to the fifth dilemma of whether
the translation may or may not add to or omit from the original, the results
showed that both translations opted for the first alternative. Finally, the answer
to the sixth dilemma of whether verse should be translated in prose or verse can
be two-sided: both poems have been translated in verse, if we take ‘verse’ to

mean the visual layout of the text. However, following Popovska (2004, p. 121),
if we understand ‘verse’ in its primary poetic meaning, to refer to the formal
versification features of the poem, then we can conclude that both poems have
been translated in prose.
The results of this paper have confirmed the long-standing opinion that the
translation of poetry is a delicate and demanding task even for translator who
are poets themselves, translators with full mastery of the languages involved,
inherent poetic sensibility and superior translation skills. This paper has
provided answers to our initial questions, but it has also raised other ones.
Can these conclusions be extended to other sets of data including poems of the
same poet, poems of other poets or, even, poetry translation in other language
combinations? Would other translators resolve the dilemmas in the same way?
These questions were outside the scope of this paper, so we leave them to future
studies to address.
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Appendix
Љубовна Love song
Сè ли ти дадов? Сè ли си зема? Did I give you all? Did you take all?
Догледање! Што чекаш? Goodbye! What are you waiting for?
Епилог нашата драма нема, Our story lacks an epilogue
таа е бескрај, ко река It is endless as the river is
што едно влече, друго носи, which takes one thing away and brings an-
што мени лика лете – other
та, како питач капка проси which alters its appearance in summer
од пресушениот ветер! and beggar-like it craves a drop
from the parched wind!
Таа е бучна, кога е полна,
та палави и плави – When full it is full of noise
таква е нашата љубов: болна And romps and flood –
кога сме најмногу здрави! Such is our love: ailing
when we are in the best of health!
Догледање! До прва пролет!
Ќе дотрчаш ко река, Farewell! Till the coming spring!
за да оживееш опустен голет, You will come running like a river
дарежна, топла, мека... Bringing life to the bare hillside
Generous, warm ad soft …
Во доцна пролет кон Нерези Towards Nerezi in late spring
Најчесто, токму што се разденило, Often enough just as day dawns

ја искачуваме оваа нагорнина. we climb this slope.
Ридот со благи грпки лулее чекори This hill’s gentle hummocks cradle wearied
морни, feet,
в пресрет; нерамнини пречекливо hospitable hillocks of green come to meet us.
зеленило. As far as the eye can see: bread-bearing fields
На дофат поглед околу: засевки And in short stretches, vineyards, vineyards,
лебородни vineyards.
и мали простирки лозја, лозја, лозја. By the branching road majestic elms,
Крај патот што ластареше: бресја, On the road itself swift steps.
бојлии,
по патот: брзоодица. We happen on the hurrying brook,
Го пресртнуваме забрзано поточето, the jester of Sultan-sui,
тој веселник од Султан-суи, and are bid good morrow by the St. Petka
и доброутрата на торбешите од peasants
Света Петка, coming down to town with a load of care
што слагаат в град со товар грижи and curds and sour milk for sale.
и нешто матеница за продавање.
Часипол јазење сме таму An hour and a half scramble and we’re there
- љубено катче починка. in this favourite restful nook.
Жените веленца постилаат The women spread their woollen rugs
под коштаните, веќе зазборени. Given over to gossip under the chestnut trees.
По некој поглед надолу лунѕа,
надолу в полето, The casual glance strays down,
каде што Скопје го пржат Down to the plain below
горештините. where Skopje broils in the summer heat.
Other Authors’ Notes:

Dr. Sonja Kitanovska-Kimovska is a translator and Associate Professor of English and Translation at the
Department of Translation and Interpreting at Ss Cyril and Methodius University (UKIM) in Skopje. Sonja
has earned her MPhil degree in English and Applied Linguistics from Cambridge University, UK, as a
Chevening Scholar, and a PhD in Translation from UKIM. She has extensive experience in specialized
translation. She has published a book on the translation of style and a number of scholarly research articles.
Her research interests include translation and style, translator training and the translation profession.
e-mail: sonjakitanovska@yahoo.com ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0037-0434
Dr. Daniela Andonovska-Trajkovska holds a Full professor position at the Faculty of Education-Bitola, St.
Kliment Ohridski University-Bitola, Republic of North Macedonia. She teaches Methodology of Teaching
Language Arts, Creative Writing, Critical Literacy, Methodology of Teaching Early Reading and Writing,
etc. Andonovska-Trajkovska writes poetry, prose and literary criticism. She has published one prose book
and 8 poetry books. She has won a number of prizes for her poems which have been translated and published
in numerous languages all around the world.
e-mail: daniela.andonovska@uklo.edu.mk ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5418-6101
ANOREXIA MIRABILIS DECODED: REREADING

FEMALE CORPOREAL CONSUMPTION IN
DICKENS’S ANGELIC DAUGHTERS1
Hristo Boev
Department of English Studies, Konstantin Preslavsky University of Shumen, Shumen, Bulgaria
Abstract: This article makes a deconstructionist reading of anorexic women

in Dickens. For this purpose, three of his novels are examined: Dombey and Son,
David Copperfield and Little Dorrit. The article challenges certain feminist claims of
women in Dickens being sacrificed at the expense of men and proposes a conscious
postponed consumption of commodities on the part of the women through marriage.
The analysis is effectuated on the basis of comparing data from the novels in question,
newspapers, medical studies and Victorian culture reviews. The results ascertain the
employment of feminine stratagems in promoting the body politics that help Dickens’s
angelic daughters to obtain the best husband for them and thus establish the successful
patriarchal woman.
Key words: anorexia, mirabilis, feminist, patriarchal, Victorian
__________________________
About the author: Hristo Boev, Ph.D. is a senior assistant professor of English and American Literature
at the Faculty of Humanities, University of Shumen, Bulgaria. He is the author of the books: Modern(ist)
Portrayals of the City in Dickens and Dos Passos and The Different Dobruja in the Literature between
the Wars (original title in Bulgarian). He is also a translator of English and Romanian with numerous
literary translations to his credit. His main interests lie in the fields of Comparative Literature, Modernism,
Literary Urbanism, Geocriticism and the Art of translation.
e-mail: h.boev@shu.bg ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6933-3167
Copyright © 2021 Hristo Boev
Article history: Received: 6 January 2021; Reviewed: 8 March 2021; Revised: 13 March 2021; Accepted:
14 March 2021; Published: 19 April 2021
Citation (APA): Boev, H. (2021). Anorexia Mirabilis decoded: Rereading female corporeal consumption in
Dickens’s angelic daughters. Studies in Linguistics, Culture, and FLT, 9(1), 40-53. doi: 10.46687/SILC.2021.
v09i01.003.
1. Originally published by Victorian Web with the title: “Anorexia Mirabilis Decoded: Re-
reading Female Corporeal Consumption in Florence Dombey, Amy Dorrit, Dora Spenlow
and Agnes Wickfield”. Publishing the article here is done with the kind permission of the
original publisher – a. n.
This article is a response to feminist readings of corporeal consumption in Gail

Houston’s highly regarded Consuming Fictions: Gender, Class and Hunger in
Dickens’s Novels (1994). Houston claims that the patriarchal society represented
in Dickens’s works necessitated the sacrifice of women whose abstention
from consumption possibly led to developing the medical condition anorexia
nervosa and consequently to their death. Anna Silver (2004) makes a similar
claim, referring to a wider range of Victorian writers, including Dickens, and
determining a recurring pattern of mainstream model middle-class Victorian
womanhood sharing “important qualities with the beliefs and behaviors of the
anorexic girl or woman” (p. 1).
In my response I aim to refute Houston’s claim by examining Dickens’s urban
representations of eating – corporeal consumption. While doing so, I examine
three novels: Dombey and Son (1848), David Copperfield (1850) and Little
Dorrit (1857) and trace the evolution of the woman who does not eat. As we
shall see, representations of urban women subvert the established interpretation,
thus revealing that this type of consumption not only performs very important
functions in Victorian Society but also serves as the core of the modern
patriarchal woman. In the course of my analysis, I review the evolution of
gender-based corporeal consumption in anorexia mirabilis as feminine tactics.
In analyzing Dickensian women’s corporeal consumption, Houston admits that
“obviously, Dickens’s heroines cannot be taken as clinical examples of anorexia
nervosa – though Rose Maylie, Nell, and Little Dorrit come close” (1994, p.
46). They are rather in a state, which she terms miraculous anorexia (ibid., p.
45) or as the Latin term goes anorexia mirabilis (inedia miraculosa or inedia
prodigiosa), a revised modernized version of traditional female piety. By
seemingly consuming less food or other commodities, Dickens’s female urban
characters consume patriarchal values as the underlining rationale for their
miraculous condition. Victorian women, who did not want to be seen eating in
public, often consumed food clandestinely, but the novelist does not show this
masked consumption, which was a strategy winning men’s admiration. I also
provide counter-arguments to Gail Houston’s claim that Dickens does not portray
supposedly anorectic women like Amy Dorrit to be physically suffering from the
symptoms of the disease whose psychic dimensions she sees in self-delimitation
expressed in “self-cannibalism”, “self-denial” and “self-suppression” (ibid.,
p. 46), as this apparent lack of physical suffering very likely participates in a
consistent system of food consumption on the sly aiming at winning a husband,
who is taken in by ostentatious or conspicuous unconsumption. There is no
doubt that reduced consumption by urban women and girls produced a cultural
phenomenon that crystallized in the physical ideal of the modern attractive
woman. In view of the claim made by Gail Houston, we should inquire whether
the patriarchal women contained in the modern metropolis of the 1850s-1880s
accepted this mode of female consumption as something self-chosen or rather

as something imposed upon them.
As Helena Michie (1990) suggests, Victorian women understood eating secretly
to be part of their feminine nature of doing things on the sly:
It is not that they [young women] absolutely starve themselves to death, for
many of the most abstemious at the open dinner are the most voracious at
the secret luncheon. Thus, the fastidious dame whose gorge rises before
company at the sight of a single pea, will on the sly swallow cream tarts
by the dozen, and caramels and chocolate drops by the pound’s weight
(p. 19).
Lisa Wade (2015), a cultural critic and sociologist, provides evidence
corroborating Michie’s argument when she draws on Victorian medical
specialists’ conclusions that fasting girls are impossibilities (p. 1):
The competition between medicine and religion became so intense that
doctors became intent on proving that these fasting girls were not, in fact,
surviving on holiness, but were, instead, sneaking food. In several cases,
doctors staked out fasting girls, watching her to make sure that she did
not eat, and these girls, relentless in the illusion, sometimes died.
Fasting girls were indeed in fashion as testified by several newspapers. Their
miraculous condition was commonly attributed to “a Visitation of God”.
The same newspapers corroborate Wade, since all observed cases of fasting
inevitably ended in the death of the fasting girl. For example, the London Daily
News, among others, reported the case of Sara Jacobs from Wales, viewing her
case as an example of, “like her predecessors, half deceiving and half deceived”
(p. 2) and implying that the girl might have taken food before a medical team
observed her condition. The newspaper, disbelieving in divine intervention, puts
the question of guilt and responsibility arising from the girl’s possible death:
Now it is all very well that science will have their victims; but which will
this poor girl be if she should die under the eyes of these nurses, and die
of starvation? Probably the persons concerned have already ascertained
what their legal position would be in such a case. We presume that, if
the girl died, an inquest must be held; but what verdict could it return?
If it were ‘felo de se,’ it would reflect on those who saw the suicide and
did nothing to prevent it. It could hardly be death from natural causes or
accidental death – there is nothing natural or accidental about it. Even the
favourite formula, ‘Visitation of God,’ would be out of place, for the real
case would be visitation of nurses. (Daily News, 1869, p. 2)
The case is followed by other newspapers, and they all confirm the subsequent
inevitable death of the girl while under medical observation quoting Daily
News such as the Pall Mall Gazette or The Western Mail (Cardiff, Wales), the

latter making an unequivocal conclusion as to the cause of her death:
After the medical evidence given yesterday at the inquest, as the result
of the post-mortem examination of the body of the deceased, there seems
to be but one opinion here among those who are prepared to judge the
case by the clear light of scientific research, and that is, that the Welsh
Fasting girl, by some means which appear tolerably clear, obtained food
and drink prior to the strict watch kept by the four nurses from Guy’s
Hospital; that she failed to obtain it afterwards, though she might have
had it if she had chosen to ask for it; and that, in the inevitable order of
nature, she died in the absence of it. On one point, all, except a very few
of the most skeptical, are agreed, and that is, that the girl did not exist at
all without food for any great length of time; and that the story of her so-
called fasting is simply and unmistakable fraud, for which the poor girl
has paid the penalty with her life. (The Western Mail, 1869, p .1)
Rebeca Lester’s “The (Dis)embodied Self in Anorexia Nervosa” (1997) attempts
to bridge the feminist cultural model of this eating disorder and its medical
treatment. In her analysis she employs Foucault’s “technologies of the self” (The
History of Sexuality) and sees the conscious and deliberate transformation of an
individual through “the constant perception and reevaluation of the relationship
between ‘the inside’ and the ‘outside’” (p. 483), that is between the self and
the body. Although she detects complicity in the continued “(re)production of
gender ideologies and beliefs” (p. 482) adduced to the self by feminism, I believe
women freely complied with a patriarchal code in order to participate actively in
a modern heterosexual society.
I agree, therefore, that the anorectic patterns in Dickens’s representations are,
indeed, gendered and embodied mainly in the Victorian feminine self, which,
however, consciously and deliberately only dissimulates lack of alimentary
consumption by allowing the body to consume food in secret, thus aiming to
endow women with unlimited consumption sanctioned by marriage.
Dickens’s urban representations created the prototype of the modern heterosexual
woman in heroines such as Florence from Dombey and Son, Amy from Little
Dorrit, Dora and Agnes from David Copperfield: all these characters embraced
the slim figure produced by a frugal diet, which, although not very healthy, did
not prevent women from being healthy enough to create a family, one of the
main ambitions in life of a patriarchal woman. Behind the Victorian masterplot
of male dominance in consumption, the modern patriarchal woman carefully
and consciously chose a strategy of body politics, one that managed to attract the
best partner for herself, act as his moral corrective and reproduce, consuming
less in the matter of commodities or food, but also expending less energy due
to lesser consumption by comparison to man. Reduced alimentary consumption
translates into increased consumption of patriarchal values, which ultimately

results in an enhanced corporeal consumption, and that by patriarchal woman,
I do not necessarily mean not modern, just the opposite: I mean a modern
heterosexual woman on her way to financial independence, still choosing
members of the opposite sex as partners.
Good examples of the feminine subversive tactics in relation to corporeal
consumption appear in the angelic daughters referred to above, who achieve
their feminine goals in slightly different ways and whose dual nature – keeping
appearances and ulterior motives are locked in the significance of their names. In
Dombey and Son, Florence, also called “Little Florence”, exhibits the mimicry
of a predatory flower (Lat. Florentia, fem. of Florentius, lit. “blooming,” from
florens (gen. florentis), pr. p. of florere “to flower”) developing exuberant
efflorescent activities, which are sustained in consistent consumption of male
praise aiming for the ultimate prize of unlimited commodity consumption
realized in Victorian marriage. As a child, she frequently endears herself to
others, winning their hearts by being an exemplary little girl: sad (having
lost her mother), humble, docile and deferential to older members of society
regardless of their sex, striving for and encouraging social inclusion rather than
exclusion (Mr. Dombey) as well as abstemious in consumption, looking on the
world with eyes full of wonder and affection:
The child, in her grief and neglect, was so gentle, so quiet, and
uncomplaining; was possessed of so much affection that no one seemed
to care to have, and so much sorrowful intelligence that no one seemed
to mind or think about the wounding of, that Polly’s heart was sore when
she was left alone again. In the simple passage that had taken place
between herself and the motherless little girl, her own motherly heart had
been touched no less than the child’s; and she felt, as the child did, that
there was something of confidence and interest between them from that
moment (pp. 34-35).
Her effusive sociability antagonizes her father, producing “an uneasiness of
extraordinary kind” (p. 37). Some part of him knows that people like her, much
more than himself or Paul, are capable of winning other people’s hearts. By
ingratiating herself with others, by exuding sorrow and affection, she renders
herself irresistible to compassion and admiration. Consequently, she has the
option of selecting the man who manifests the strongest signs of veneration for
her. In doing so, she poses an ambiguous threat to the integrity of the Dombey
family, since she might remove the protective layer, she places around the
male members of the family should she opt for orbiting another phallic center.
Moreover, she demonstrates a rather uncanny independence by being safe even
when lost in the city where Walter finds her. She is thus a Victorian precursor
of Raymond Queneau’s Zazie dans le Metro (1972), or Alice’s Adventures in
Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (2009). Just like Zazie and Alice, she can handle
the opportunists, such as Mrs. Brown, she encounters along the way in her own
terms to come out of this adventure unscathed (pp. 79-86).
Florence’s ability which makes others pity her wins the admiration and desire
of a male protector – Walter, her future husband:
‘Yes, I was lost this morning, a long way from here – and I have had my
clothes taken away, since – and I am not dressed in my own now – and
my name is Florence Dombey, my little brother’s only sister – and, oh
dear, dear, take care of me, if you please!’ sobbed Florence, giving full
vent to the childish feelings she had so long suppressed, and bursting
into tears. At the same time her miserable bonnet falling off, her hair
came tumbling down about her face: moving to speechless admiration
and commiseration, young Walter, nephew of Solomon Gills, Ships’
Instrument-maker in general (p. 86).
Walter, overwhelmed by her acts of unconsumption, manifested in her parting
with her shoes and good clothes and exchanging them for old skins and bad
shoes, is completely won over by her tears, which she seems to dispense at will,
using them to express both grief and joy, one turning into the other in the fraction
of a second (p. 86). In a preceding scene, Florence has sought male protection in
the company of her brother Paul by instinctively entreating to sleep next to him,
this profound yearning for the phallic center finding its consummation when
she secures Walter’s devotion and affection: “So Walter, looking immensely
fierce, led off Florence, looking very happy; and they went arm-in-arm along
the streets, perfectly indifferent to any astonishment that their appearance might
or did excite by the way” (p. 87).
Florence’s unpretentious manners win her another friend – Walter’s uncle Gill
in whose shop she dozes off before the fire (p. 90). Her very limited consumption
is also accompanied by gestures of disproportionate gratitude to people who
offer her basic assistance, and even though we are assured by the author that it
is “the innocence of her grateful heart” (p. 92) that makes her touch Walter’s
face with hers whether consciously or unconsciously, the fact remains that these
gestures are part of her stratagems for winning male admiration. These feminine
techniques also appear in her manner of establishing immediate intimate contact
with the people from the lower classes, her temporary minimal consumption of
the city, overly loving nature and the urge to please everyone around by doing
them little favors in which the central part is their savoring her graces: beauty
while dancing, voice while reading, etc., always being by the bedside of her
sick brother, Paul, later on assuming the contained comportment of a young
lady – “staid and pleasantly demure with her little book or work-box” (p. 270).
As a result, they win her universal approbation, providing her with numerous
young men from whom she can choose (p. 607) and setting her on a fast track
to getting married to Walter, which helps her achieve her goals of a modern
patriarchal woman and renders her an avid consumer of patriarchal values to be
cashed in postponed increased post-marital commodity consumption.
When shown to be consuming food, Florence either does not eat at all or eats
for the sake of others, thus even further winning their praise: when at a dinner
table with her father and step-mother Edith, she does not consume food, but
the spectacle of a family scandal during which Edith repeatedly claims that
she does not eat at home (p. 682), thus taking on the gigantic proportions of
a spending ogress who consumes only the most expensive commodities with
the added money value of public labor (p. 683). Alternatively, Florence may
take a morsel of deliciously cooked dinner by Captain Cuttle just to humor him
(p. 711). Although she refrains from consuming food, she does not refrain from
consuming men’s admiration as she clears up the table and sweeps up the hearth
in such an arduous manner that he sees her “as if she were some Fairy, daintily
performing these offices for him; the red rim on his forehead glowing again,
in his unspeakable admiration” (p. 711). Florence, more than Amy Dorrit, is
a perfectionist in her consumption of men’s praise as she proceeds to give the
captain his pipe to smoke and makes a grog for him while he endlessly tortures
her evoking the memory of the supposedly drowned Walter, knowing only too
well that Walter is alive.
Pursuing her goal to the end, once married to Walter, Florence brings up the
question of her being a financial burden to him:
‘I don’t mean that, Walter, though I think of that too. I have been thinking
what a charge I am to you. ‘A precious, sacred charge, dear heart! Why,
I think that sometimes.’ ‘You are laughing, Walter. I know that’s much
more in your thoughts than mine. But I mean a cost. ‘A cost, my own?’ ‘In
money, dear. All these preparations that Susan and I are so busy with – I
have been able to purchase very little for myself. You were poor before.
But how much poorer I shall make you, Walter!’ (p. 819).
Sure enough, at this point Walter remembers the presence of a purse with some
savings for rainy days after which, upon hearing this news, Florence declares
that she is happy, in fact, to be his burden (p. 819).
Amy Dorrit (Lat. amita – aunt, also a nursery name for mother, Fr. aimée –
loved), a veritably agony aunt, as the name suggests, achieves her goals with an
even sterner behavior and more austere diet. Her case is, however, much better
justified since she is the child of the Marshalsea, just like her father, Mr. Dorrit,
who is the Father of the Marshalsea. With her seemingly unobtrusive manner
and abstaining from consumption, she manages to attract the attention of two
suitors – John Chivery, the turnkey’s son, and Arthur Clennam, a mysterious
man, who has come from abroad with the experience and potential to be a
successful man of business. Unsurprisingly, Amy chooses Arthur, thus opting

for the modern man of the times, undoubtedly aware of the fact that a marriage
with John would mean identifying with the old world of the prison:
She, the child of the Marshalsea; he, the lockkeeper. There was a fitness
in that. Say he became a resident turnkey. She would officially succeed
to the chamber she had rented so long. There was a beautiful propriety
in that. It looked over the wall, if you stood on tip-toe; and, with a trellis-
work of scarlet beans and a canary or so, would become a very Arbour.
There was a charming idea in that. Then, being all in all to one another,
there was even an appropriate grace in the lock. With the world shut out
(except that part of it which would be shut in) (p. 226).
One could argue that Amy’s pursuit of Arthur’s affection and the ultimate prize
– marriage is effectuated in more devious ways than Florence could ever have
devised: Little Dorrit refuses to see Arthur, thus torturing herself, but feeding
fuel into the flames of his rather poorly masked desire for her. Like Florence,
she also lives within a close orbit of the male members of her family, impeding
Arthur Clennam’s advances till the end “as suppressing her sexuality in denying
his advances to her sanctifies and secures Amy Dorrit the patriarchal prize
denied Little Nell from The Old Curiosity Shop” (Boev, 2011).
Again, like Florence, Little Dorrit is prone to unconsumption refusing to dress
in a manner becoming the new status of her family after they temporarily move
to riches. As her sister complains:
Here is that child Amy, in her ugly old shabby dress, which she was so
obstinate about, Pa, which I over and over again begged and prayed her to
change, and which she over and over again objected to, and promised to
change to-day, saying she wished to wear it as long as ever she remained
in there with you – which was absolutely romantic nonsense of the lowest
kind – here is that child Amy disgracing us to the last moment and at the
last moment, by being carried out in that dress after all. And by that Mr.
Clennam too!’ (pp. 453-454).
Her failing to consume renders Amy irresistible to Arthur in the same way as
it affects Walter when he finds Florence lost on the street. However, with both
heroines the logic differs: Florence consumes very little because she is to be
married to someone below her status, who has to prove himself as a modern
man with a profession – the one of a mariner; Amy’s reduced consumption
can be justified by the fact that she has spent most of her life in the Marshalsea
prison orbiting her father, uncle, and brother and protecting them from the world
without by being the one who always listens and gives comfort in need. This
very reduced consumption has made her irresistible to Arthur since the very
moment he sees her (p. 103).
A major development of the subject at-hand is the treatment of Dora Spenlow

(Gk – doron – gift), (David Copperfield). Dickens’s first female urbane character,
she is a true gift for the men, enchanting her suitor in a purely modern corporeal
fashion. She affects David Copperfield with the curves of her body and the
sound of her name:
‘Where is Miss Dora?’ said Mr. Spenlow to the servant. ‘Dora! I thought.
‘What a beautiful name!’ We turned into a room near at hand (I think it
was the identical breakfast-room, made memorable by the brown East
Indian sherry), and I heard a voice say, ‘Mr. Copperfield, my daughter
Dora, and my daughter Dora’s confidential friend!’ It was, no doubt, Mr.
Spenlow’s voice, but I didn’t know it, and I didn’t care whose it was.
All was over in a moment. I had fulfilled my destiny. I was a captive
and a slave. I loved Dora Spenlow to distraction! […] I could only sit
down before my fire, biting the key of my carpet-bag, and think of the
captivating, girlish, bright-eyed lovely Dora. What a form she had, what
a face she had, what a graceful, variable, enchanting manner! (pp. 376-
378).
The quintessence of the modern Victorian as far as corporeal consumption is
concerned – food consumption shaping their physical appearance – is finely
defined in the following passage in which David consumes Dora at the dinner
table by being obsessed with her, and she, herself consuming nothing alimentary
at all but patriarchal values:
I don’t remember who was there, except Dora. I have not the least idea
what we had for dinner, besides Dora. My impression is, that I dined
off Dora, entirely, and sent away half-a-dozen plates untouched. I sat next
to her. I talked to her. She had the most delightful little voice, the gayest
little laugh, the pleasantest and most fascinating little ways, that ever led
a lost youth into hopeless slavery. She was rather diminutive altogether.
So much the more precious, I thought (p. 378). (italics mine)
Conscious abstention from eating definitely shapes the body, and this abstention
becomes one of the typical traits of the Victorian female character in Dickens’s
represented spaces – diminutive with little voice, little laugh, little ways. The
slim feminine figure could only be imagined in its synecdochal representation
of a tiny waist, which only the corset made possible. The curves and shapes of
women were concealed in the hooped dresses they usually wore in public. As
another British Victorian newspaper, The Graphic (London) testifies, the ideal
of feminine beauty was rather different from Dickens’s and was more truthfully
articulated by Dickens’s protégé, Wilkie Collins:
There is one point on which we do not hesitate to join issue with Mr.
Wilkie Collins. He states that “the average English idea of beauty in
women may be summed up in three words – youth, health, plumpness.

The more spiritual charm of intelligence and vivacity, the subtle attraction
of delicacy of line and fineness of detail are little looked for and seldom
appreciated by the mass of men in this island.” (The Graphic, 1870, p. 1)
Dora, along with Dickens’s other similar female city dwellers, is rather a modern
projection of Dickens’s own ideal of feminine beauty – a beauty synonymous
with and consuming daintily and exquisitely, one very close to twenty-first-
century perceptions of the feminine figure. Dora, unlike some other female
inhabitants of the metropolis, is a veritable Victorian gift for men hunting the
opposite sex, and as a reduced consumer of patriarchal values, she has to die.
Cathy Taylor (2001), a lecturer on antique clothing, points out that the feminine
figure in the age of Victoria appearing in newspapers, paintings, and clothing,
preserved in museums, seems quite different:
Corseting partially explains many of those tiny-looking antique clothes in
shops and museums. Nineteenth-century people were probably no more
slender than people of today, but fashionable women depended on their
corsets, rather than diet or exercise, to endow them with the ideal figure.
And the ideal figure was not anorexically lean: it was rounded and ample,
with an unnaturally small waist (p. 1).
Dora is portrayed as wearing waistcoats, but no specific mention is made of
corsets, since such garments were unmentionable in family literature. Still,
she has a slender waist (p. 629) as a prerequisite to her feminine beauty. The
waistline did play a very important part in Victorian feminine beauty and it had
a very practical patriarchal purpose as illustrated with Agnes Wickfield, David
Copperfield’s second wife (pp. 838-839)
The passage above and the one that follows indicate the traits Agnes possesses
to win David Copperfield. She starts her relationship with him in a slightly
disadvantageous position, playing the second fiddle, being a confidante until
gradually her qualities of calmness, goodness, diminutiveness, docility, and
modesty secure for her the prize of becoming his loving and loved wife:
I see her, with her modest, orderly, placid manner, and I hear her beautiful
calm voice, as I write these words. The influence for all good, which she
came to exercise over me at a later time, begins already to descend upon
my breast. I love little Em’ly, and I don’t love Agnes - no, not at all in
that way – but I feel that there are goodness, peace, and truth, wherever
Agnes is; and that the soft light of the coloured window in the church,
seen long ago, falls on her always, and on me when I am near her, and on
everything around (p. 226).
Agnes (Gk hagne – pure, holy, Lat. agnus – lamb) is a much more active disguised
Amy-like city inhabitant, who is rather a wolf in a sheep’s clothing although her
name suggests she should be meek as a lamb. She appears seemingly grateful to
play a secondary role in Copperfield’s love life, but she is in fact a woman who
patiently bides her time, being well aware that she has the required patriarchal
values as well as feminine beauty, qualities that should be rewarded with the
ultimate prize, marriage. After she has been Copperfield’s companion in grief
and sorrow, the man gradually begins to appreciate her influence until he
sees it as indispensable (p. 260). Finally, he realizes that apart from being the
best confidante, she is a woman, too (p. 261).
Every time he sees her, she always seems to be occupied with womanly chores
or pastimes: netting, knitting, calmly reading a book that she, just like the
adolescent Florence, seems to always have with her. She is invariably happy to
see him, and he is always overwhelmed by this effusive display of patriarchal
submission. Confident in her charms, even though at times appearing the
opposite (which prompts admiration), Agnes makes gradual advances into
his affection by slowly, but surely, turning gestures of comfort and solace into
ingenious seductive stratagems in which her body plays a major role: “She put
her hand – its touch was like no other hand – upon my arm for a moment; and I
felt so befriended and comforted, that I could not help moving it to my lips, and
gratefully kissing it” (p. 354).
Agnes becomes a mirror reflecting David’s emotions and then beaming back
consolation, placidity, empathy, and sympathy in a way like the other angelic
daughters until David succumbs (p. 495). Agnes’s devious ways are detected
by Dora herself, but when she sees her, she is easily fooled by her unassuming
manner, and consequently, lowers her guard:
I was troubled by no doubt of her being very pretty, in any case; but it fell
out that I had never seen her look so well. She was not in the drawing-
room when I presented Agnes to her little aunts, but was shyly keeping
out of the way. […] Dora was afraid of Agnes. She had told me that she
knew Agnes was ‘too clever’. But when she saw her looking at once so
cheerful and so earnest, and so thoughtful, and so good, she gave a faint
little cry of pleased surprise, and just put her affectionate arms round
Agnes’s neck, and laid her innocent cheek against her face. (p. 592)
Dora could have had David for the rest of a long life if it had not been for the
presence of Agnes, and then, conveniently, Dora, being a gift has to die, as the
gift, once granted by God is also reclaimed by Him so that Agnes can take
her place even with the benediction and kind permission of the dying wife.
The question remains if Agnes would have walked an extra mile enhancing
even further her powerful influence over David provoked by her beauty
(continuously augmented) and her counsel (increasingly followed) and then the
answer should be positive, since David would have made the first step towards
her as a love object finding her charms totally winning as it is not by accident
that Agnes does not fail to register an important point by looking prettier than
Dora and far superior in intellect. Indeed, the insistence on qualifying adjectives
associated with her of which the most prominent is innocent does not really
testify to innocence of mind or intention as it is just about an innocence of
looks – affectionate arms, innocent cheek. After this classical love confession
comes her ready-made one: that she has loved him all her life (p. 840). This last
declaration suggests that she might well have increased her influence over him
until he declared his love. The following passage reveals Agnes’s position as an
indispensable substitute:
‘When I loved her – even then, my love would have been incomplete,
without your sympathy. I had it, and it was perfected. And when I lost her,
Agnes, what should I have been without you, still!’ Closer in my arms,
nearer to my heart, her trembling hand upon my shoulder, her sweet eyes
shining through her tears, on mine! ‘I went away, dear Agnes, loving you.
I stayed away, loving you. I returned home, loving you!’ (p. 839)
After this classical love confession comes her ready-made one: that she has
loved him all her life (p. 840).
The above examples call into question Gail Houston, Anna Silver, and Helena
Michie’s assumption of forced anorexia in Dickens’s female urban characters.
In addition, the reduced food consumption to which these critics refer is a self-
imposed one, far from being really dangerous since it is based on what was
not shown, neither in real life, nor in fiction: women’s food consumption, the
miraculous anorexia by which Gail Houston (1994) refers to the Dickensian
heroine’s “silently and insidiously imposing the oscillations between desire
and negation of desire upon the heroine’s bodily interior” (p. 45), thus allowing
the male protagonist “the luxury and implied heroism of a more exteriorized,
intellectual vacillation between his own appetite and asceticism” (p. 45) confirms
my analysis if we disregard its antithetical relationship to men’s corporeal
consumption and its signification in Dickens’s novels. Miraculous anorexia in
what Houston calls its “insidious nature” is based on covert food consumption.
We may see the insidiousness as a matter of this convert consumption rather
than the kind of insidiousness with which she stigmatizes the Dickensian
representations of women, and we can interpret their consumption as these
characters’ conscious strategy. In other words, far from suffering from this
condition, these women can reap the benefits that accrue to an adept consumer
of corporeal culture, benefits ultimately realized in their increased consumption
after marriage.
The lack of real symptoms of anorexic suffering in Dickens’s thin female figures
(which, as Victorian newspaper reports show, would have appeared in reality),
and the fact that not showing consumption does not mean there was none is
corroborated by the evidence adduced by Cathy Taylor, Helena Michie, Lisa
Wade, and Victorian newspaper articles. Victorian women were not anorexic but
looked plump and yet slim if judged by their waists and faces. Many women did
not consume food openly, but did so on the sly, aiming at securing themselves a
patriarchal prize, marriage.
The angelic daughters of the house are, therefore, adept consumers of Victorian
values that bring the patriarchal reward of marriage. Marriage transforms
this consumption of values into regular consumption of commodities and of
expensive restaurant food, as is the case with a married, but still angelic Edith
(p. 400), caught in the natural metamorphosis of passing from one phase to
the other described by the author as “so beautiful and stately, but so cold and
so repelling” (p. 396), and describing herself as “artful, designing, mercenary,
laying snares for men” (p. 418), an early foreboding of her nature of an avid
consumer, as sort of a successful, but remorseful Becky Sharp from Vanity
Fair (1992) consuming in spite of herself, who could easily be Florence’s
projection of a future wife hypothesized in Edith’s numerous warnings to
Florence not to follow her example (pp. 532, 679, 899). We should realize,
therefore, that the odious hyper-consuming wives were angelic daughters once
(Edith) and that their success as wives is, indeed, based on their triumph as
angelic daughters. The only step they are to make before they reach the state of
fully-fledged modern women is to stop having remorse for their consumption.
By contrast, ladies who were not designated for courtship by prospective
husbands did not have to play any reduced consumption games and could enjoy
the second-rate meals of the kitchen staff, which were sufficient for keeping a
plump figure.
As Dickens himself aptly put it in Dombey and Son, “the maid who ought to
be a skeleton, but is in truth a buxom damsel, is, on the other hand, in a most
amiable state: considering her quarterly stipend much safer than heretofore and
foreseeing a great improvement in her board and lodging” (p. 524).
Dickens’s representations of female city inhabitants are, therefore, mainly
concerned with showing women in marrying age to be of small stature, abstaining
from consumption, demure, pleasing and loving, which creates the image of
an irresistible form and character for the prospective husband. Their aim is
to enthrall a man or several men and then make the most propitious decision
based on a number of choices. Behind their unconsuming guise as daughters
of the house is hidden an avid consumer’s nature manifested in the portrayal
of the hyper-consuming wives or elderly women – Edith (Dombey and Son) or
Mrs. General (Little Dorrit). Occasionally, as Fanny, Amy’s sister, shows, this
nature is revealed in the daughters themselves. The portrayal, therefore, of the
angelic daughters in Dickens as seemingly reduced consumers reveals them as
only aiming to attract the best partner in marriage who would be enticed by this
small consumer and assume sometimes wrongly, that he can afford to marry her
(Mr. Dombey and Edith) trusting that she will not change, but she does (signs
of that can be seen in Florence). By reducing consumption with the daughters
even further, Dickens anticipates the image of the modern patriarchal woman:
self-conscious, intelligent, slim, and always ready to enchant a prospective
suitor well aware of the fact that with marital bliss comes unlimited corporeal
consumption.
References:
(1869, December 16). Daily News, Issue 7372, p. 2. London, England.
(1869, December 23). The Western Mail, Issue 203, p. 1. Cardiff, Wales.
(1870, July 16). The Graphic, Issue 33, p. 1. London, England.
Boev, H. (2011, October 6). Orbiting the center and moving from it: Amy Dorrit and
harriet (Tattycoram) in Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens. Retrieved March 17, 2021,
from http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/dickens/ld/boev2.html.
Carroll, L. (2009). Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.
Oxford University Press.
Dickens, Ch. (1998). David Copperfield. The Electric Book Company Ltd.
Dickens, Ch. (2009). Little Dorrit. The Econarch Institute.
Dickens, Ch. (2009). Dombey and Son. The Econarch Institute.
Houston, G. T. (1994). Consuming fictions: Gender, class, and hunger in Dickens’s
novels. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
Lester, R. J. (1997). The (dis)embodied self in anorexia nervosa. Social Science &
Medicine, 44(4), 479-489. doi:10.1016/s0277-9536(96)00166-9.
Michie, H. (1989). The flesh made word female figures and women’s bodies. New York:
Oxford University Press.
Queneau, R. (1972). Zazie dans le metro. Folio.
Silver, A. K. (2004). Victorian literature and the anorexic body. Cambridge University
Press.
Taylor, C. (2001). Where have all the corsets gone? Retrieved March 17, 2021, from
http://www.victoriana.com/corsets/corseting.htm.
Thackeray, W. M. (1992). Vanity Fair. Wordsworth Editions.
Wade, L. (2015, November 13). Anorexia Mirabilis: Fasting in Victorian England
and modern India – sociological images. Retrieved March 17, 2021, from https://
thesocietypages.org/socimages/2015/11/13/anorexia-mirabilis-fasting-girls-in-
victorian-england-and-fasting-men-in-modern-india/.
RESEARCH METHODS IN
LINGUISTICS: AN OVERVIEW
Snejana Obeyd
Department of English Studies, Konstantin Preslavsky University of Shumen, Bulgaria
Abstract: The paper offers a short theoretical overview of the main research
paradigms, key issues, procedures, data collection and methods of analysis applied
to the study of language. General description of qualitative, quantitative and mixed-
method research is followed by more detailed account of the three approaches.
Different criteria for evaluating research are enumerated and specified and the most
useful tools for obtaining quantitative data in linguistics are pointed out: questionnaire
surveys and the experimental studies. The reviewed qualitative procedures leading to
the generation of a set of data are ethnography, one-to-one interviews, focus group
interviews, introspection, case studies, diary studies and research journals. Qualitative
content analysis is a deeper level of analysis and interpretation of the underlying
meaning of the data. Grounded theory has grown into the “mainstream” and many of
its theoretical aspects are considered. The most significant of the discourse-analytic
approaches: Conversation analysis, Discourse analysis, Critical discourse analysis
and Feminist Post-Structuralist Discourse analysis are highlighted. The application
of the discussed research paradigms to various research contexts is exemplified by
reference to authors whose work is regularly published in SILC.
Key words: research, methods, analysis, qualitative, quantitative
_____________
About the author: Senior Lecturer Snejana Obeyd is a PhD candidate working at the Department of
English Studies at Konstantin Preslavsky University of Shumen, Bulgaria. She teaches courses in general
and applied English to BA students in English Studies and Applied Linguistics with English and Russian.
Her courses focus on translation from Bulgarian into English and vice versa. Her area of interest and
research is text linguistics and translations.
e-mail: s.obeyd@shu.bg ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0676-5560
Copyright © 2021 Snejana Obeyd
Article history: Received: 1 February 2021; Reviewed: 20 February 2021; Revised: 25 March 2021;
Citation (APA): Obeyd, S. (2021). Research methods in linguistics: An overview. Studies in Linguistics,
Culture, and FLT, 9(1), 54-82. doi: 10.46687/SILC.2021.v09i01.004
Introduction
Research is done in order to provide new insights into a particular subject, to
generate knowledge and thus assist in comprehending an issue. In scientific
sense, research is “the organized, systematic search for answers to the questions
we ask” (Hatch & Lazaraton, 1991, p. 1). It is important for the researcher to
become familiar with the principles of best practice. Different methods have
been developed to collect and analyze data resulting in two research paradigms:
qualitative and quantitative research. However, Brown (2001) argues that a
more constructive approach is to view the two of them as “a matter of degrees”
than “a clear-cut dichotomy”. Hence, they are not mutually exclusive and a third
branch “mixed methods research” is introduced, combining the data collection
and the analysis levels of both qualitative and quantitative methods to best effect.
The paper aims at providing a brief account of the three research methodology
frameworks, their general characteristics and implications. It gives an overview
of the key issues, questions, criteria and principles concerning research in
linguistics. Different phases of quantitative data collection and analysis, and
qualitative procedures are examined, focusing on description of discourse-
analytic approaches to oral and written texts.
Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods research

Research involves collecting data, analyzing it and making inferences based
on the analysis. Therefore, the key issue is data. In line with the basic research
paradigms, there are three main types of data as outlined by Richards (2005, p.
19):
•• Quantitative data is expressed in numbers (for example, the number of
times a linguistic item occurs in a specific context, resulting in numerical
data analyzed by statistical methods);
•• Qualitative data usually involves recorded oral data, transcribed
to written form as well as written (field) notes and various kinds of
documents, resulting in open-ended, non-numerical data further
analyzed by non-statistical methods;
•• Language data involves language samples, obtained from respondents
for the purpose of language analysis. This type is often part of qualitative
data.
As regards the numerical vs. non-numerical contrast between the two methods,
which is too straightforward, Richards (2005) concludes “qualitative and
quantitative data do not inhabit different worlds. They are different ways of
recording observations of the same world” (pp. 3-6). In the same context, Miles
and Huberman (1994) state that all data are qualitative because they refer to
“essences of people, objects and situations” (p. 9). The main distinction lies in
the nature of categories and the relevant process of the two methods. Categories
or codes are used for structuring the information obtained. Bazeley (2003, p.
414) asserts that “Codes – the way they are generated, what they stand for,
and the way they are used – lie at the heart of differences between quantitative
and qualitative data and analysis tools”. They also differ in their approach to
the individual diversity of the participants examined and the results obtained.
Quantitative researchers support a “meaning in the general” strategy, whereas
qualitative researchers focus on a detailed understanding of the “meaning in the
particular”. Therefore, quantitative research could avoid individual respondent
variation and the researcher’s subjective interpretation which makes it more
attractive in terms of its systematic nature managed by precise regulations.
Whereas qualitative methods allow revealing subtle meanings and individual
nuances and the attraction lies in the sensitivity to the individual. Quantitative
research offers a structured macro-perspective of the general trends, while
Qualitative research represents a context-sensitive micro-perspective of the world
(Dörnyei, 2007, p. 27) If applied in appropriate contexts, the two approaches are
equally valuable – a view referred to as the “situationalist” approach to research
methodology. (Rossman & Wilson, 1985). Hence, particular research issues are
looked at from different angles, either from a macro-perspective or a micro-
perspective thus unfolding different aspects of the issue in question. It is this
mixing method that has great potential in research contexts.
Quantitative research
The progress of the natural sciences in the nineteenth century gave rise to
quantitative social research and early researchers accepted and followed the
“scientific method” in their studies. Generally, that method suggests three key
stages in the research process: 1) observing a phenomenon; 2) creating an initial
hypothesis; 3) testing the hypothesis by collecting and analyzing empirical data
using systematic procedures. After the hypothesis has been tested and validated
by recurrence, it is accepted as a scientific theory. Thus, the scientific method
provided the tool to examine questions objectively. Francis Galton was the first
to establish quantitative data collection and analytical methods in psychology at
the turn of the twentieth century. That was the period dominated by quantitative
methodology in the social sciences. This dominance started to change in
the 1970s when research methodology started a process of reorganization.
Nowadays, quantitative and qualitative methods coexist in different fields of
social sciences.
The quantitative research is characterized with the use of numbers and they
are enlivened to meaning when they are contextually backed up, i.e. we define
the category the number stands for as well as the values within the variable.
Another important feature is the theoretical categorization, i.e. the specification
of categories is done before the study. Quantitative research is mainly focused
on the common features of groups of people/things, operating with the concepts
of averages and is less interested in individual cases. It deals with the study of
variables expressing the common features. The variables are measured, thus,
specifying the relationship between them. The most prominent quantifying
feature is statistical analysis. The use of standardized measures eliminates
subjectivity from the various phases of the research process. The specific
aspect of quantitative research is going beyond the particular in the pursuit
for generalizing the facts. In short, quantitative research has strengths that
are indisputable – it is systematic, controlled, involving exact measurements
resulting in reliable and generalized results. On the other hand, the method is not
sensitive in unfolding the dynamics of the examined phenomenon. Reasonably
enough it is considered as “overly simplistic, decontextualized, reductionist in
terms of its generalizations, and failing to capture the meanings that actors
attach to their lives and circumstances” (Brannen, 2005, p. 7).
Qualitative research
Qualitative research is really difficult to give an exact definition for it lacks a
clear-cut set of methods and has “no theory or paradigm that is distinctly its
own…” (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005, p. 7). And then they concluded “Qualitative
research is many things to many people” (p. 10). However, there are some
peculiar features that need to be mentioned. The foremost feature of qualitative
research is its emergent nature, i.e. no aspect of the research design is predicted,
the study is flexible and open to new details that may emerge during the
process. The investigation starts without hypotheses determined beforehand but
gradually the focus of research becomes more salient and the analytic concepts
are formed throughout the process of research. Another distinctive feature is
the nature of qualitative data. That kind of research works with abundance of
data (field notes, journal, diary entries, interviews, videos) transformed into a
textual form. The common aim of all types of qualitative methods is to decode
a set of meanings in the phenomena in question, so it is necessary for the data
to include rich and complex details. Consequently, if a thorough description
is aimed at achieving almost any appropriate information can be accepted as
qualitative data. The research setting takes place in its natural environment
without attempts to manipulate the situation. The research refers to the
subjective opinions, experiences, feelings of individuals and thus the obvious
goal of research is to explore the participants’ views of the situation being
studied. Meaning is a fundamental qualitative principle – only the participants
themselves reveal the meanings and interpretations of their experiences.
Hence the “insider perspective” is vital for researchers, i.e. they try to view
and interpret a situation from the inside. Another characteristic feature is the
small sample of participants involved due to the intensive and time-consuming
research. Qualitative research analysis is basically interpretive, i.e. the final
conclusions are the result of a researcher’s subjective interpretation of the data.
As Miles and Huberman (1994, p. 7) point out, “The researcher is essentially the
main ‘measurement device’ in the study”.
Qualitative research is effective in exploring new areas by studying and
explaining in details a phenomenon. It does not rely on previous knowledge and
empirical findings. The methods are used for decoding highly complex matters.
The participant sensitivity of the research is a major factor in deciding the main
points of the phenomenon requiring special attention as it gives preparatory
guidelines validated by the respondents. Thus, grounding the research on such
evidence we avoid intellectual manufacture focusing on the truth of the matter.
The study has a flexible, emergent nature allowing for the researcher to look for
answers to questions that have unexpectedly arisen. Duff (2008) emphasizes
that “instead of seeking a generalizable ‘correct interpretation’ qualitative
research aims to broaden the repertoire of possible interpretations of human
experience” (qtd. in Dörnyei, 2007, p. 39). The analysis is founded on rich data,
thus, avoiding speculations as well as ensuring plenty of material for the report.
An interesting example illustrating the method is the textual analysis of Ivanova
(2020, pp. 16-35).
Mixed methods research

In the last 30 years, mixed method research has been considered a third approach in
the methodology of research. It is a combination of research tools and techniques
for the study of the same phenomenon. Miles and Huberman (1994, p. 310) best
described the new emerging trend “Quantitative and qualitative inquiry can
support and inform each other. Narratives and variable-driven analyses need to
interpenetrate and inform each other. Realists, idealists, and critical theorists
can do better by incorporating other ideas than by remaining pure. Think of it as
hybrid vigour.” In 1970s the term “triangulation” was introduced in relation to
combining qualitative and quantitative data sources. Denzin (1978) supported
triangulation as a way of validating hypotheses by exploring them by means
of multiple methods. The mixed method has a lot of support and Lazaraton’s
statement is demonstrative in this respect “I would also hope that we would
see more studies that combine qualitative and quantitative research methods,
since each highlights ‘reality’ in a different, yet complementary, way” (2005,
p. 207).
Mixed methods research can be specified as a combination of quantitative and
qualitative methods in a single project. The real issue in the mixed-method
paradigm concerns how the quantitative-qualitative combination takes place
and for what purpose. In fact, different elements of the two paradigms can be
combined in several ways:
•• two types of research questions (with qualitative and quantitative
approaches);
•• the manner in which the research questions are developed (participatory

vs. preplanned);
•• two types of sampling procedures (e.g., probability and purposive);
•• two types of data collection procedures (e.g., focus groups and
surveys);
•• two types of data (e.g., numerical and textual);
•• two types of data analysis (statistical and thematic), and
•• two types of conclusions (representations, “objective” and “subjective”,
etc.). (Tashakkori & Creswell, 2007, p. 4, qtd. in Litosseliti, 2010, p. 33).
Mixed method research is seen as “increasing the strengths” of one method

while “eliminating the weaknesses” of another, which highlights the best of
both paradigms. A quantitative phase can be followed by a qualitative element to
balance the generalization issue by adding depth to analysis or results (Dörnyei,
2007, p.45). This method is appropriate for multi-level analysis of a complex
phenomenon. We can obtain a clearer picture by linking up numbers and words.
It also provides evidence for the research validity of the results, increasing their
generalizability. That method more easily reaches a larger audience, offering
something to everybody. Certain phenomena are best described using either
qualitative or quantitative methods but the mixed method paradigm can present
extra benefits for the comprehension of a phenomenon and it has the potential to
contribute to high quality of research findings.
Quality criteria
Quality criteria in quantitative research

In doing quantitative research the reliability and validity of the methods
and instruments of measurement have to be considered. Reliability refers
to “consistencies of data, scores or observations obtained using elicitation
instruments, which can include a range of tools from standardized tests
administered in educational settings to tasks completed by participants in a
research study” (Chalhoub-Deville, 2006, p. 2). Reliability is denoted by
Rasinger as “measure repeatedly delivering the same (or near same) results”
(Litosseliti, 2010, p. 55). There are different ways of checking reliability: test–
retest method measures the consistency of results when you do the same test
again to the same sample at a different time; interrater is when the test is carried
out by different people.: parallel forms – different versions of a test designed to
measure the same thing: and internal consistency measures the consistency of
the individual components of the test (Middleton, 2019). The other criterion for
quality in quantitative research is validity, which term is simply explained by
Dörnyei “a test is valid if it measures what it is supposed to measure” (2007,

p. 51). Currently, the term points to the truthfulness of the interpretation of the
test scores. According to Lynch (2003, p. 149) “validity is a property of the
conclusions, interpretations or inferences that we draw from the assessment
instruments and procedures, not the instruments and procedures themselves”
(qtd. in Dörnyei, 2007, p. 52). Thus, content- and criterion-related evidence
contribute to the overall validity construct together with validity analysis of the
consequences of score interpretations and use. Bachman (2004) summarizes
measurement validity in several main points: - validity is a quality of the
interpretations; - perfect validity cannot be proven – only evidence could be
provided that the argument is plausible enough; -validity is specific to every
situation; -it can be supported with various kinds of evidence. Research validity
is broader than measurement validity as it is related to the overall quality of the
whole research project and more particularly to 1) the meaningfulness of the
interpretations that researchers make on the basis of their observations, and 2)
the extent to which these interpretations generalize beyond the research study
(Bachman, 2004). Validity is divided into two types: internal and external.
A study has internal validity, if the product is a function of the variables
measured. External validity is the extent to which we generalize our findings
to other contexts, i.e. when the result does not apply only to the original sample
studied.
Quality criteria in qualitative research

Setting quality standards in qualitative research is problematic because the
study is subjective, discursive and context-specific., i.e. “truth” is conditional
and “facts” subjectivized (Morse & Richards, 2002). There are three basic
quality factors to be taken into account in qualitative research: - Insipid data
– the quality of the analysis depends on the quality of the original data. If the
data is not interesting, then we will obtain stereotypical results and “close to
common sense”, as Seale et. al. point out (Dörnyei, 2007, p. 55).; - Another
important factor is the quality of the researcher, who is the “control centre”,
“the instrument”, responsible for the whole procedure.; - Anecdotalism and the
lack of quality safeguards – Usually researchers are limited in their presenting
examples of the data that has led them to conclusions. Silverman, Miles and
Huberman consider that the whole process and report could be put to doubt for
there are not any essential safeguards against a biased conclusion (Dörnyei,
2007, p. 56).
The specific quality criteria are connected with reliability. It refers to the “degree
of consistency with which instances are assigned to the same category by
different observers or by the same observer on different occasions” (Silverman,
2005, p. 224). Kirk and Miller define reliability in field work as the extent to
which the findings are not dependent on accidental factors. While Morse and
Richard clarify the tendency of neglecting reliability in the past “reliability

requires that the same results would be obtained if the study were replicated”
(Dörnyei, 2007, p. 57). However, repetition of the process is problematic since
the conclusions are a result of respondents’ personal accounts and a researcher’s
subjective interpretation.
Lincoln and Guba’s taxonomy of quality criteria

Lincoln and Guba (1985) introduced the term “trustworthiness” in relation to
validity. They suggest four components that “trustworthiness” is composed
of: - Credibility, or the “truth value” of the study, the qualitative equivalent
of “internal validity”; -Transferability, or the applicability” of the results to
other contexts, the qualitative parallel of “external validity”; - Dependability,
or the “consistency” of the findings, the qualitative equivalent of “reliability”;
- Confirmability, or the neutrality of the results, the qualitative counterpart of
“objectivity” (Dörnyei, 2007, p. 57).
The following taxonomy presents various aspects of the traditional concepts of
validity and reliability by Maxwell (1992 as qtd. in Dörnyei, 2007).
Maxwell’s taxonomy of validity in qualitative research

Maxwell viewed the qualitative and quantitative approaches to validity as
equally compatible. He proposed five components of validity:
- Descriptive validity refers to the factual precision of the researcher’s report
and is seen as the principal aspect whereas all the other categories of validity
depend on it. It signifies the researcher’s experience as well as the collection
and interpretation of data based on other investigations, a strategy known as
“investigator triangulation”.
- Interpretative validity. Bearing in mind that descriptiveness underlies all
validity aspects good research focuses on the interpretation of the real events,
behaviours and objects by participants. The quality of the portrayal from the
participants’ perspective can be guaranteed by discussing the findings with
them, i.e. to obtain feedback.
- Theoretical validity refers to the internal validity of the study, i.e. whether the
researcher’s report includes an appropriate theoretical basis and how well the
theory characterizes the phenomenon in question.
- Generalizability. Maxwell (1992) described internal and external
generalizability which concern the extension of the description to people, time
and setting different from those studied directly. “Internal generalizability”
is generalizing within the group observed while “external” one refers to
generalizing to other groups. Generalizability in qualitative research has a
different function from the one in the quantitative method and the “internal”
one is more important for researchers. The main ideas generated through the
process of theoretical expansion which is, in turn, eliqtd. from particular people
or situations are applicable to other situations. Thus, specificity might lead to
generalization. A strategy to test generalizability, offered by Duff (2006), is to
take into consideration the participants’ estimation about the generalizability
of the issue in question.
- Evaluative validity refers to the researcher’s evaluation of the targeted issue
with regard to usefulness and practicability, i.e. how accurately the research
analysis gives value judgement to the phenomenon. That aspect refers to the
explicit and implicit use of an evaluation system in a qualitative analysis,
investigating how the evaluative assertions fit the issue observed (Dörnyei,
2007, p. 59).
Research design-based strategies

These strategies provide the most convincing proof about research validity and
they are an inherent part of the project.
-Method and data triangulation – the term “triangulation” refers to the use
of multiple methods, sources or ideas in a research project. By exploiting
triangulation, the possibility of biased conclusions in qualitative studies is
efficiently reduced because the diverse data collection provides strong evidence.
Yet, there is a question left unanswered: What will be the interpretation of any
disagreement between the results?
- Prolonged engagement and persistent observation – engaging for a long time
with the issue contributes to validity (Dörnyei, 2007, p. 62).
- Longitudinal research design – Duff (2006) states that longitudinal studies
can open up various progressive ways and document different kinds of
interaction.
Quality criteria in mixed methods research

Dörnyei (2007) suggests some aspects of the quality of mixed methods research
to be considered:
- The rationale for mixing methods – It is worth mentioning that a mixed
methods study offers a more in-depth means of making inferences acceptable. It
combines the validity evidence of the qualitative and quantitative components,
thus ensuring research validity;
- The “design validity” of the study. - The notion of “design validity” (Teddlie &
Tashakkori, 2003) concerns a new aspect of internal validity peculiar to mixed
methods research. It is associated with the extent to which quantitative and
qualitative components of a mixed methods research are combined so that the
general design exhibits strengths and, weaknesses of the constituent methods,

that would not overlap (Brewer & Hunter, 1989; Tashakkori & Teddlie, 1998).
To support their assertions of a good design validity, researchers have to
present evidence for two quality aspects: first, they have to prove the choice
of the particular methods, integrated into the study, to be reasonable. The
main principle should be centered around the “fitness-for-purpose” selection
(Dörnyei, 2007, p. 63).
Research questions and hypotheses

The logical way to do research includes generating the research questions,
choosing the design, then the method and the instruments allowing for the
questions to be answered. However, the “research-question-first” principle does
not always work when we know little of the topic.
Every project starts with a research topic which initially is usually a rather vague
idea about the phenomenon. Then we need to state the purpose of the research,
describing the objectives of the planned investigation focusing on the reason
for launching the study and its potential importance. The next step towards
“narrowing down” and “operationalizing” the research purpose is to define
research questions. They are intended to convert the purpose into particular
questions that the study is supposed to answer. Formulating the right questions
is the basis of the research methodology for achieving the purpose. Johnson and
Christensen (2004) argue that the research question is frequently omitted from
the final report for it is predominantly a restatement of the purpose (Dörnyei,
2007, p. 73). The good research questions have to postulate an interesting
issue. As Gall et al. (2007, p. 41) put it “The imagination and insight that goes
into defining the research problem usually determines the ultimate value of a
research study more than any other factor” (Dörnyei, 2007, p. 73). The logical
way to do research includes generating the research questions, choosing the
design, then the method and the instruments allowing for the questions to be
answered. Realising the possible outcomes of the investigation we can narrow
down the scope of the research purpose to “research hypotheses” in place
of, or in addition to, questions. Hypotheses are specific predictions about the
results and the empirical study will either confirm or deny them. Nunan (1992)
recommends how an investigation can be put to work. He suggests creating
a “research outline” consisting of a plan with headings, each of which would
involve a short statement. The headings have to refer to the research sphere,
purpose, questions/hypotheses, the data collection method, type of data analysis
(Dörnyei, 2007, p. 74).
Paradigmatic differences in formulating the research questions

Qualitative and quantitative investigation processes are different in the
specification of the purpose of study and consequently, in the questions to be
explored. A well-specified quantitative purpose leads to formulating the target
variables which, in turn, define concrete methodology. Research hypotheses
are conceived on the basis of a researcher’s predictions. An inherent feature of
qualitative studies is their evolving nature and that is why qualitative research
purposes and questions are often vaguer than their quantitative equivalents.
The qualitative research purpose only specifies the central idea of the study
with the intention of gaining new insights and probably theorizing about the
issue explored. Accordingly, qualitative research questions are more general
and explanatory, focusing on the “big picture” of the phenomenon.
Mixed methods studies characterized with their contradictory nature, require
the definition of a purpose and questions that are both specific and vague. As
Dörnyei (p. 74) proposes, a good strategy is to start with a general purpose
statement, followed by a hypothesis for the specific mixed design and the
methods to be applied, and concluded by research objectives and questions for
the different research components. Creswell (2003) offers a practical model in
mixed method research that consists of placing the questions at the beginning
of each phase in the study.
Sunderland (2010) explores different types pf research questions with a focus
on linguistic studies: - Primary/ secondary questions, depending on the focus
of the study; - Main/ contributory; - Overarching/ subordinate questions,
hierarchically ordered; - Empirical/ methodological/ theoretical, meant for
working empirical findings; - Researcher-generated/ participant-generated; -
Empirical/ speculative questions (qtd. in Litosseliti, 2010, p. 16). The questions
have to be related so that they could form a coherent unit. Good research
questions are basic to a good research study in terms of data collection, methods
and analysis.
Quantitative data collection

The most useful tools for obtaining quantitative data in linguistics are the tests
and questionnaires. The participant sample in empirical research is fundamental
in guaranteeing a successful study. The sample is the group of people the
researcher examines, the proper selection of which is crucial for drawing
accurate conclusions. According to Dörnyei (2007), the sampling procedures
are “probability sampling”, typical for scientific research and “non-probability
sampling”, which are also common for qualitative research. Probability sampling
includes a number of scientific procedures: random sampling, stratified random
sampling, which combines randomization and categorization, systematic
sampling refers to choosing every nth member of a group, cluster sampling. Non-
probability sampling includes three main strategies: quota and dimensional

sampling, the former is a stratified one and the latter is a subset; snowball
sampling is a chain nomination of members, convenience or opportunity
sampling. The more scientific the investigation, the smaller the size.
Questionnaire surveys
The main and most frequently used tool and data collection method is the use
of questionnaire surveys. They are easy to form and have a great potential for
gathering a lot of information in a simple processible form. The essence of the
research is attempting to find answers to questions in a systematic way and it is,
consequently, logical that the questionnaire has turned to be the most popular
research tool in quantitative research. The methodology is the following:
1) sampling the participants and 2) designing and managing the research
instrument.
Questionnaires are defined by Brown as “any written instruments that present
respondents with a series of questions or statements to which they are to react
either by writing out their answers or selecting from among existing answers”
(Brown, 2001, p. 6).
In general, questionnaires can produce three types of data about the respondent:
-Factual questions are used to discover particular facts, usually demographic
characteristics; - Behavioral questions are focused on finding personal history
information; -Attitudinal questions cover people’s thoughts, attitudes, opinions,
beliefs and values. Questionnaires elicit information from the respondents
without evaluating a performance based on certain criteria. In contrast,
“production questionnaires”, or the traditionally called “discourse completion
tasks” (DCTs), used in interlanguage pragmatics research require the informants
to produce some sort of authentic language data as a response to prompts. They
are “structured language elicitation instruments” similar to language tests.
The main issue concerning questionnaires is their design. The way questionnaires
are formulated is significant for the level of perception and sensitivity of the
respondents which would affect the responses. The American psychologist
Rensis Likert has discovered a genius way of overcoming the unexpected
reactions to the wording of questionnaires by using “multi-item scales”. That
measurement of “language attitudes” is the foundational technique used most
often in research today. According to Dörnyei (2007, p. 103) the “scales refer
to a cluster of several differently worded items that focus on the same target”
relying on different aspects of the item. In the end, the summation of the scores
for the similar questions is averaged. Thus, multi-item scales “maximize the
stable component that the items share and reduce the extraneous influences
unique to the individual items” (Dörnyei, 2007, p. 104).
Typically, the questionnaire is a structured data collection tool with items either
asking for specific information or giving response options for the respondents to
choose from. Most professional questionnaires are composed of “closed-ended”
items in the form of multiple choice questions, allowing for the respondents
to select an option. The most famous one is the “Likert scale”, composed of
a proposition and a range of possible answers measuring people’s attitudes,
opinions from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree”. Semantic differential
scales are similar to Likert scale asking respondents to rate a target within the
frame of bipolar adjectives. There are a lot of other closed-ended types, such
as “Numerical rating scale”, “True-False items”, “Multiple-choice items”, etc.
Open-ended questionnaires, however, can be employed for some qualitative,
exploratory studies since they require creative writing thus allowing more
freedom in providing answers. The application of the method is exemplified in
Ivanova and Gerova (2020, pp. 48-69; see also Ivanova, 2017).
The efficiency of questionnaires is their foremost strength for they make it
possible for a large amount of data to be collected and processed for a very
short time. They are also a quite flexible tool that could be used in various
situations with different people, aimed at various topics. However, the method is
considered as providing rather superficial data for its inconvenience in exploring
matters thoroughly.
The experimental study is the most scientific quantitative research design
because it manifests undeniable cause-effect relationships. The methodology
is based on comparing data obtained from manipulated and controlled process
with data – a result of similar process without any special control. The design is
difficult to apply in educational contexts so the “quasi-experimental design” is a
compromise with respect to the distribution of random assignment. It is similar
to true experiments and the initial group-differences have to be decreased. The
way to realize this is by avoiding the volunteer principle and minimizing pre-
test differences between the two groups. Two methods are used for realizing
that objective:
- Matching participants in the treatment and control groups;
- Using analysis of covariance (AN COVA), which is the most frequently used
statistical procedure (Lazaraton, 2005). This analysis evaluates the significance
of the differences in the means of more than two groups (Dörnyei, 2007, p.
118).
Qualitative data collection

Qualitative data collection and analysis are not two separate phases but are
often circular and overlap. It is difficult to decide whether a method refers to
data collection or data analysis or a combined design – grounded theory and
case studies are examples of this uncertainty. Qualitative procedures leading

to the generation of a set of data are ethnography, one-to-one interviews,
focus group interviews, introspection, case studies, diary studies and research
journals (Dörnyei, 2007, p. 124). Qualitative data can be generated from various
sources and it is always translated into a text. It is characterized by the huge
amount obtainable and its heterogeneous nature. Hence, we must be careful in
the selection of data: it has to be useful, realistic, following diverse strategies
and “discovery-oriented” in the character of the inquiry.
In contrast to quantitative research, qualitative studies are concerned with
describing and presenting individual aspects of the phenomenon in question.
Thus, the main goal of sampling is focusing on people who can be potential
suppliers of varied understanding of the issue explored, so that plenty of rich
data would be collected. A qualitative research has to have a “purposeful”
sampling with a plan that should be in accordance with the object of study.
The process of sampling is preferable to remain open for a long time so that
it could be alternated with the collection and analysis of initial accounts thus
additional data is provided. The cyclical process of “moving back and forth” is
referred to as “iteration” (Dörnyei, 2007, p. 126). The process should continue
until we reach “saturation”. Glaser and Strauss (1967) described this as “the
point when additional data do not seem to develop the concepts any further
but simply repeat what previous informants have already revealed. In other
words, saturation is the point when the researcher becomes “empirically
confident” (Dörnyei, 2007, p. 127). The most common strategies for achieving
“saturation” are: homogeneous sampling, i.e. selecting participants with similar
characteristics; typical sampling, i.e. participants sharing features typical with
respect to the research focus; criterion sampling, maximum variation sampling,
extreme/ deviant case sampling, critical case sampling, convenience sampling,
etc.
Ethnography
The roots of ethnography could be traced back to anthropology and linguistic
ethnography respectively draws on work in linguistic anthropology. Rampton
et al. (2004) speak of “tying ethnography down and opening linguistics up”
(Litosseliti, 2010, p. 139). Ethnographic research focuses on the description and
analysis of the practices, values, behaviors, beliefs and languages of cultures.
The notion of culture is intended to mean any “bounded units” (Harklau, 2005),
such as organizations, communities and groups (qtd. in Dörnyei, 2007, p. 130).
The approach is an excellent way of entering into “another culture” and “gaining
insight into the life of organizations, institutions and communities” (Dörnyei,
2007, p. 133). Exploring unknown “territories” ethnography is successful in
producing initial hypotheses which after the data collection phase are verified,
developed and reviewed. In linguistic ethnography, regular patterns of action or
talk of a group from a particular social context are identified and interpreted.
“This is achieved through participant observation, field notes, ethnographic and
open interviews, and often recordings/ transcripts” (Creese, qtd. in Litosseliti,
2010, p. 146).
According to Harklau (2005), a distinctive feature of classic ethnographic research
is that it involves direct “participant observation” in a natural setting, and most
studies that establish themselves as “ethnographic” include some degree of this
method. Several features are emphasized as defining the ethnographic approach
(Dörnyei, 2007, p. 131): 1) Focusing on participant meaning, i.e. the issue is
looked at subjectively through the eyes of informants enabling the researcher to
make a thorough study of a different culture.; 2) Prolonged engagement in the
natural setting. The “in site” observation and interaction can help in identifying
and explaining unexpected issues; 3) Emergent nature i.e. the research work
progresses gradually after some field work has been done. The final product
of the analysis is a “holistic cultural portrait of the group” that integrate the
participants’ and the researcher’s views (Creswell, 2007, p. 72).
Interviews
It is the most frequently used method in qualitative research because it is an
integral part of social life. The typical qualitative research interview has been
described as a “conversation with a purpose” (Burgess, 1984, p. 102) and “the
gold standard of qualitative research” (Silverman, 2000, p. 51). Its sharing-
knowledge essence makes it a “versatile instrument” in probing into an issue.
The typical type of interview is one-to-one “professional conversation” (Kvale,
1996, p. 5) that has a structure and a purpose “to obtain descriptions of the
life world of the interviewee with respect to interpreting the meaning of the
described phenomena” (Dörnyei, 2007, p. 134).
Interviews take many forms, some are more structured, others – informal.
The structured ones represent data collection in its most controlled form. They
are similar to quantitative questionnaire, follow a guide and the questions are
framed in advance so that variations are almost impossible. The context of the
unstructured interview, known also as “ethnographic interview”, is informal
and the interviewer does not follow any preliminary guide. The interview is
useful for in-depth exploration of a particular phenomenon or its development
(Dörnyei, 2007, p. 136). A compromise is the semi-structured type that follows
a guide but the interview can take unexpected turns and lead to interesting
findings. This is the most frequently used type in linguistic research requiring
the researcher to have general vision of the issue or the sphere explored. The
key principle in interview methodology is the neutrality of the interviewer, not
affected by personal bias.
Focus group interviews

They are often considered a subtype of interviews and are useful in many
different spheres relevant to qualitative research. As its name suggests focus
groups are always characterized with multiple respondents engaged in a
collective talk centered around a limited number of issues. It involves “within
group” interaction that results in large amount of top-quality data. The
collective brainstorming elicits discussions and may “spiral off” in various
directions while the researcher acts more as a facilitator than as an interviewer.
Heterogeneous groups are valuable with regard to obtaining diverse data and
examining different perspectives of the issue explored.
Introspective methods
As a result of psychological research at the end of 19th century, the focus of
which was the conscious mind of a person or more exactly the mental processes
that go through the mind, introspection appeared as a term, including the
various ways of eliciting information about thought processes. Nunan (1992),
defines introspection as “the process of observing and reflecting on one’s
thoughts, feelings, motives, reasoning processes, and mental states with a view
to determining the ways in which these processes and states determine our
behavior” (Heigham & Croker, 2009, p. 220). Gass and Mackey (2000) point
out that “the assumption underlying introspection is that it is possible to observe
internal processes”, that is, what is going on in one’s consciousness, in much
the same way as one can observe external real-world events (Dörnyei, 2007,
p. 147). Introspective methods are seen to be relevant to applied linguistics
because language is what represents consciousness on the surface. Kormos
(1998) emphasizes their importance in second language learning. Introspective
methods include two techniques: “think aloud” and “retrospective reports”. The
proponent of introspective methods in psychology, Ericsson (2002), analyzes
the relation between mental processes and verbal reports. In the “think aloud”
technique respondents are asked to verbalize their stream of thoughts while
performing a task. In the “retrospective interview” the respondents express
their thoughts after the completion of the task and the validity of data depends
on the time interval between the two actions. For that reason, Mackey and
Gass (2005) recommend the “retrospective interview” or the “stimulated
recall”. There is some kind of stimulus used for the retrieval process that can
help activate respondents’ short/ long-term memory. (Dörnyei, 2007, p. 149).
Verbal reports are considered valuable storage of cognitive processes which
are further analyzed depending on the kind of issue that is investigated. The
advantages of the introspective methods in relation to linguistics is that it gives
access to language production resulting from mental processes. It could be
used in combination with other methods, increasing the amount of data and its
reliability.
Case Studies
The case study is a type of research design and analysis which is generally
characterized as the most widely used approach in qualitative research in
linguistics and education. The notion of “case study” could be defined as the
study of the “particularity and complexity of a single case” (Stake, 1995, p.
xi). A case is predominantly a person and could be anything representing a
singular unit with apparent boundaries or a “bounded unit”. The focus of case
studies is to provide an in-depth description and analysis of a case (or cases)
using multiple data sources, such as interviews, observations, diaries, verbal
reports, etc. The task of the researcher is to explore and identify the boundaries
of the case regarding the focus and interest of the researcher. Each study aims
at exploring one singular case, thus, it can be divided into multiple levels of
research which justifies the use of different methods, so as to fully enhance our
comprehension of the issue studied. Stake (1995, 2005) points out three types of
case study: 1) the intrinsic case study is undertaken to explore the inner nature
of a particular case for its own sake; 2) instrumental case study provides insight
into a wider matter and the actual case is not of primary concern. According
to Merriam (1998) the intrinsic case study entails a descriptive approach with
a focus on particularity whereas the instrumental one also involves evaluation
and interpretation. It supports, proves or challenges theoretical statements
(Heigham & Croker, 2009, p. 70); 3) the multiple or collective case study
focuses on several cases to study the general conditions of one issue which
makes it similar to instrumental case study. Thus, we can gain knowledge about
a bigger collection of cases. The case study researcher Yin (2003) offers still
other three types based on the objectives of the study: exploratory, descriptive
and explanatory (Heigham & Croker, 2009, p. 70). The effective case study
researcher must be a careful observer for s/he is the “filter”, deciding which
data is valuable to serve the aim of the study. We run the risk of distorting the
data due to our preconceived opinion and a research diary could be of great help
in maintaining a critical attitude on the data. An application of this research
design can be observed in the analysis provided by Radostina Iglikova and Olga
Usataya on the translation of movie titles in English into Russian (Iglikova &
Usataya, 2019; see also Seizova-Nankova, 2016; Iglikova, 2017).
Research journals
Keeping track of one’s thoughts, ideas, suppositions during the research
process is important for every researcher. Hence, the journal or diary are the
perfect assistants and a valuable source of data. Dörnyei views the journal as
“the vehicle to transform private knowledge, by reflection and analysis, into
potential public knowledge” (2007, p. 160). Research journals play a significant
role in maintaining validity and reliability in qualitative research for they reveal
each step in the project and prove the ideas and theories. It takes some discipline
to keep a journal but it repays the efforts for it can become a “platform for
conceptualizing, noticing, articulating, or testing out new hypotheses or ideas”
(Schmidt & Frota, 1986). Altrichter and Holly (2005) highlight that an important
aspect of the research journal as a data source is to include “descriptive
sequences” such as accounts of activities and events, or reconstructions of
dialogues. In such accounts, the authors underline, “details are more important
than summaries and we need to focus on the particular rather than the general”
(Dörnyei, 2007, p. 161).
Qualitative data analysis

The analysis of qualitative data is seen as characterized by great diversity and
there are several principles that are considered essential for the mastery of the
process. The first point to stress is “the language-based nature of the analysis”, i.e.
the data is transformed into words. The second principle defines the “iterative”
and “non-linear” nature of the analysis, i.e. the researcher moves back and forth
between the data collection, analysis and interpretation depending on the results.
Crucial for the data analysis is “saturation” and the process should stop when
there are not any new ideas, themes and topics emerging. Another central point
in terms of qualitative analytical approach is its reliance on subjective intuition
than following formalized procedures. The analysis has to be flexible, “artful”,
allowing for new ideas to emerge and flow freely without the limitations of
traditional procedures. However, opponents of that approach claim that only
systematic procedures help in achieving valid conclusions. Thus, it becomes
a challenge for the researcher to conform to “disciplined artfulness” when
applying the methods valuable for producing new theories. The last essential
principle underlying the qualitative data analysis is the use of “general analytical
moves “or it is often termed as “qualitative content analysis” as opposed to the
use of specific methodology.
Qualitative content analysis

The roots of content analysis can be found in a quantitative analytical method
of examining written texts that requires the counting of words, phrases, or
grammatical structures that are grouped under specific categories. However,
the categories in the content analysis are not predetermined but are obtained by
inductive reasoning from the collected data (Dörnyei, 2007, p. 245). Qualitative
content analysis is referred to as “latent level analysis” because it is a deeper
level of analysis and interpretation of the underlying meaning of the data. There
are four phases of content analysis: 1) transcribing the data, 2) pre-coding and
coding – pre-coding reflections shape our ideas about the data and would lead to
forming the themes of the project. Dörnyei argues that “all the qualitative coding
techniques are aimed at reducing or simplifying the data while highlighting
special features of certain data segments in order to link them to broader topics
or concepts” (2007, p. 250). Coding should be accompanied by some analytical
tools that can help to develop the final themes, the most useful of which is
writing memos. These analytic memos are the seeds that will give rise to the
main conclusions. The process of interpreting the data and drawing conclusions
incorporate taking account of everything we have, evaluating the collected
patterns, concepts and ideas, and selecting the final themes which to develop in
detail (see for example Mazahir, Yaseen & Siddiqui, 2019).
Grounded Theory
For many scholars “grounded theory” is “a common methodological framework
for qualitative research in general” (Arksey & Knight, 1999, see also Chun Tie,
Birks & Francis, 2019; Thurlow, 2020) since it provided theoretically-based
and complex methodology trying to undermine the dominance of quantitative
research. Grounded theory has grown into the “mainstream” and many of its
theoretical aspects have turned into “core issues” in qualitative research. The
principal aim of the method is to create a new theory framed on the basis of
empirical data or as Creswell points out “the intent of a grounded theory study
is to move beyond description and to generate or discover a theory, an abstract
analytical schema of a process (2007, p. 59). The question of the validity of a
theory is debatable and Fassinger (2005) claims that if the result of the research
is “a coherent, contextualized explanation (rather than merely a contextual
description) of an issue, possibly also outlining a (tentative) model or framework”
(Dörnyei, 2007, p. 260), then it could be accepted as a theoretical product.
A characteristic aspect of the grounded theory is the differentiation between
the different phases of coding the data. The system of coding consists of three
distinct levels. The first one is “open coding” in which the data is split into
pieces that are categorized. The emphasis is on provoking new ideas rather
than on description and interpretation. In the second level, called “axial
coding”, interconnections between categories are established resulting in
more embracing concepts that include several items. Creswell recommends at
this level that we return and reanalyze the data in order to describe the links
between the categories (Dörnyei, 2007, p. 261). That would provide the basis
for the third level of “selective coding” aimed at selecting a “core category”
which will be the focus of analysis henceforth and the central theme of the
theory. A coherent abstract “core” that encompasses the other concepts ensures
an in-depth “inductive” analysis of a phenomenon which moves on to a theory
grounded on that specific mode of analysis. An example of qualitative research
in which data received from focus-group interviews were analysed by means
of grounded theory could be found in Ivanova’s chapter on teacher-trainees’
preferences for explicit evaluation (Ivanova, 2020, pp. 197-222).
Discourse-Analytic Approaches
The term “discourse” is defined in a number of ways: “verbal interchange
of ideas”, “formal and orderly and usually extended expression of thought
on a subject”, “connected speech or writing”, “a linguistic unit larger than a
sentence” (Merriam-Webster, n.d.). For Fairclough (1995) “discourse” is the
use of language seen as a form of social practice, a social activity and mutual
influence, people who interact in real social situations [as well as] the social
creation of reality, a kind of knowledge” (1995, p. 18). It is also viewed as a text,
functioning in a specific sphere of social life (Todorova, 2015). In the words
of Jaworski and Coupland (1999, p. 49) discourse is a “form of collaborative
social action” in which language users “jointly collaborate in the production of
meanings and inferences” as they communicate.
Discourse-analytic approaches reassess and examine the use of language in
spoken and written communication. Chomsky, who is the father of modern
linguistics, postulated that the aim of linguistics is to study “linguistic
competence” i.e. the unconscious knowledge of grammar or the rules governing
language use. Del Hymes (1972) introduced the notion of “communicative
competence” as opposed to “linguistic competence” involving not only mastery
of the language code but also knowledge of appropriate language use. That
notion is important in discussing spoken and written discourse, taking account
of the social and cultural setting.
There are two main fields of discourse-analytical methodology: microanalytical
approaches, dealing with “the finer detail of linguistic interactions in transcripts”,
and macroanalytical approaches, “which consider how broader social processes
work through language” (Heller, 2001, qtd. in Litosseliti, 2010, p.119). The
following four approaches are the most significant in the field and the most salient
in presenting the contrast between the two trends: microanalytical approaches
(Conversation analysis) and macroanalytical approaches (Critical discourse
analysis) as well as that which combines (Dscourse analysis) or challenges the
aspects of both (Feminist Post-structuralist Discourse Analysis).
Conversation Analysis (CA)

CA is at the other extreme of Chomsky’s view related to the focus of linguistic
study. Spoken interactions dominate our world and the exploration of “talk-in-
interaction” provides abundant data of the underlying rules of language. The
sociolinguist Sacks (1992) was the first to explore utterances as “social actions
which speakers use to get things done (or to avoid getting things done) in the
course of a conversation with others” (Litosseliti, 2010, p. 121). CA postulates
that social interactions are the creators of reality and arena for human actions.
Its goal is to discover and describe interactional architecture. A guiding
assumption of research in CA is that the natural setting of language is “co-
present interaction” and that its structure is basically adapted to that setting.
While talking we perform actions which instigate subsequent ones and thus
form a connected series of actions. Language in action has a social organization
and it is this “sequence” in interaction that is the focus of investigation. The
following features characterize the essence of research in CA: 1) Orderliness
in talk-in-interaction, known as the “speech-exchange system”, which includes
patterns of conversational openings and closings, turn taking, sequence of
connected utterances (“adjacency pairs”), feedback and conversational “repair”.
The interest is, as Paltridge explains, in “fine-tuned analysis” of structure and
coherence of interactions (Paltridge, 2006, p. 110; see also Litosseliti, 2010, p.
121); 2) CA is a data-centered approach, studying only naturally occurring
language and the actions people perform with their speech in real-life situations.
The CA transcriptions are valuable resources for analysis of data because they
record details (increased pitch, pauses, sequence of utterances) significant for
the progress of interaction and for a detailed analysis of meaning production; 3)
neutrality and objectivity: prior presuppositions to the data, speculations about
participants’ identities, social settings and norms are considered irrelevant.
CA can be employed as a valuable tool in cross disciplinary studies by using
methods of microanalysis, operating from the bottom to the top. It attributes
special value to the linguistic data and considers itself a caution against the
“relativisation and perspectivisation of cultural analysis” (Schegloff, 1997, p.
183). An example of the application of this method of analysis could be seen in
Peneva (2016; see also Peneva, 2017).
Discourse Analysis (DA)

Discourse analysis for Brown and Yule is an investigation of what language is
used for, i.e. its functions. They identify the two main functions of language:
“transactional” or expressing “content” and “interactional”, displaying social
relations and attitudes (Brown & Yule, 1983, p. 1). The term discourse analysis
was introduced by Zelig Harris as a way of analyzing connected speech or
writing. He was interested in language “beyond the level of sentence”, especially
in the ways language features are distributed in texts. Another concern of
Harris is “the relationship between linguistic and non-linguistic behavior”
(Paltridge, 2006, p. 2) which refers to the analysis of language in use, or how
the interpretation of language depends on the situation in which it is used. There
are various ways of using language in particular situations and the linguistic
features characterizing them as well as the realizations of meaning in language
is the primary focus of DA.
DA explores the relationship between language and the context (social or
cultural) it is employed in, considering both spoken and written language. DA is
interested more in the meaning of utterances than in the utterances themselves,
which is also an aspect of Pragmatics. DA examines stretches of text and how

they are organized. Mitchell (1957) was the first to study the discourse structure
of texts, i.e. the particular ways of ordering what we say or the overall textual
organization. He introduced the term “stages “in DA to mean the definite phases
we go through in particular spoken or written situations, languages and cultures”
(Paltridge, 2006, p. 4). The social and cultural settings in which the speaking
or writing occurs is a key issue in DA in comprehending the language choice.
It is closely related to Hyme’s notions of “ethnography of communication” and
“communicative competence” which examine different aspects of speech events
(interactions) and their impact on language in different cultural settings.
There are different views on what DA is. Cazden (1998) summarizes two main
views: those which examine the natural flow of language and those which focus
on different ways of talking and understanding. Fairclough (2003, p.36) contrasts
“textually-oriented DA” with language in action. He and other researchers
do not view these perspectives as contradictory. Therefore, DA is a view of
language at textual level and also an aspect of language in use, i.e. how through
language people achieve communicative goals, perform acts, present themselves
to others, communicate with other cultures and groups, etc. DA studies texts as
communicative units, embodied in social and cultural practices or as Paltridge
puts it “discourse is shaped by the world and shaping the world” (2006, p. 9).
DA is concerned with the effect the use of language has on social identities and
relations and how these influence the use of language. DA takes us into realizing
the “bigger picture” of language description (Riggenbach, 1999). It takes us into
the social and cultural context of discourse to help us understand the language
choices (Partridge, 2006, p. 20). Discourse-analytic approaches depend on the
different perspectives taken and the issues examined in the research process
(see also Johnstone, 2008; Tannen, Hamilton & Schiffrin, 2018).
Discourse and Grammar

Research has provided evidence of patterns of language examined from a
discourse perspective and proved that linguistic items exhibit different functions.
A focus of Discourse grammar is on larger units of text than isolated words,
phrases or sentences, i.e. it has moved beyond sentence level. A key point is the
role the language items have in the entire discourse and how they combine to
link meanings in a text, i.e. to make a cohesive and coherent unit. The focus of
Discourse grammar are such language aspects as: reference, cohesion, collocation,
conjunction, substitution and ellipsis, theme-rheme and thematic progression,
which contribute to the texture of a text (Paltridge, 2006, p. 130). Hilles (2005)
studies discourse and grammar from a contextual perspective, paying special
attention to the socio-interactional or contextual factors that may affect and
determine the use of a particular linguistic item in the discourse (Paltridge,
2006, p. 129). Discourse-based grammar relates form, function and context, and
places appropriateness and use as the central issue of its descriptions (Hughes &
McCarthy, 1998). Similar view is presented by Larsen-Freeman (2003) claiming
that form, meaning and use are indispensable for establishing the base of all
descriptions. Discourse-based grammar recognizes the importance of language
choices, fosters cognition of interpersonal factors and gives insights into aspects
of grammar that could not be reasonably explained.
Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA)

CDA is a new democratic approach to the study of texts that emerged at the end
of 20th century and can be seen as “a problem-oriented interdisciplinary research
programme, subsuming a variety of approaches” (Wodak, 2013, p. xx). All
research methods share the same idea and interest in the “semiotic dimensions
of power, injustice and political-economic, social or cultural change in our
globalized and globalising world and societies (Wodak, 2013, p. xix). CDA is
concerned with the study of language and its relation to power and ideology in
the social, institutional and political contexts in which it occurs. CDA research
considers the use of discourse in relation to issues such as: gender, ethnicity,
cultural differences, ideology, identity, politics, inequality, racism and how
these are organized and reflected in texts. According to Van Dijk, CDA aims to
explore, reveal and challenge some hidden ideologies, positions, perspectives
and values that underlie texts (2001, p. 352). He argues that CDA defines the
influence of the social contexts on language diversity and the discourse social
variables such as, gender, race, age, etc. Awareness of the inherent properties
of communicative situations affects language. Thus, the study of discourse tries
to strike a balance between society, culture, situation and language. Wodak
and Mayer (2009, p. 7) stress the need for interdisciplinary work in relation to
CDA in order to grasp how language works in constituting and transferring
knowledge, “in organizing social institutions or in exercising power”. For Van
Leeuwen, CDA views discourse as a “conductor of power and control” and “an
institution for a social creation of reality” (1993, p. 793). It focuses mainly on the
analysis and critique of unfair social practices. A critical analysis may include
examining the text thoroughly, and then moving to analysis and interpretation.
Adding systematicity to analysis, Todorova claims that CDA “incorporates three
levels of analysis: the text, the discursive practices that create and interpret it
and the larger social context relevant to it” (Todorova, 2015, p. 189).
There is no consensus concerning the definition of CDA. However, Fairclough
and Wodak give a brief summary of the main principles that CDA is based upon:
1) discourse is constitutive and reflective of social and political issues; 2) power
relations are brought into play and performed through discourse; 3) discourse
is part of social relations, establishing and maintaining them. It also fosters
social and gendered stereotypes and inequalities (2003, p. 4) ideologies are
formed and displayed within the frames of discourse (Paltridge, 2006, p. 179).
Though CDA has a diverse nature it is mainly used in institutional discourse

and the language of media. An illustrative example of the application of CDA
can be seen in Cheshmedzhieva-Stoycheva (2020b; see also Cheshmedzhieva-
Stoycheva, 2017; Cheshmedzhieva-Stoycheva, 2016).
Feminist Post-Structuralist Discourse Analysis (FPDA)

FPDA has its origin in feminist post-structuralism and is developed as a method of
analysis by Baxter. It can be defined as: an approach to analyzing intertextualised
discourses in spoken interaction and other types of text. It draws upon the
poststructuralist principles of complexity, plurality, ambiguity, connection,
recognition, diversity, textual playfulness, functionality and transformation.
The feminist perspective on poststructuralist discourse analysis considers
gender differentiation to be a dominant discourse among competing discourses
when analysing all types of text (Baxter, 2008, p. 245, qtd. in Litosseliti, 2010,
p. 130). The poststructuralist part of FPDA considers discourses as forms of
organizing power relations between speakers, and the analysis examines the
ways discourses work intertextually positioning participants as powerful and
powerless, frequently changing their positions. The feminist part of FPDA
emphasizes the social category of gender with regard to the ways in which power
relations are created through spoken interaction. Hence, the principal function
of FPDA to foreground discourses of gender difference as they are performed
within specific contexts. The following are the key principles FPDA is based
upon: 1) Continuous reflexivity, i.e. the need to be critical about values and
suppositions of discourse analysis; 2) FPDA does not have an “emancipatory
agenda” for women but a “transformative quest” (Baxter, 2003). This means
that it aims to represent the complex nature of female experience and women’s
voices that have been “silenced” or marginalized since FPDA acknowledges
that these have been absent in many cultures. Thus, FPDA is in favour of small
scale, localized transformations that challenge dominant discourses; 3) Diversity
of speakers’ identities: for FPDA, identities are formed by means of multiple
variables, denoting power such as race, ethnicity, age and gender, which is the
dominant among these. Due to context, some of the variables are more notable
than others in creating identities through interaction; 4) FPDA questions the
tendency of polarized subjects, the powerful and powerless, but posits that
gender identities are complex and unstable in their positions of power. 5) An
interaction between a fine-grained analysis and macroanalysis, FPDA examines
the linguistic data regarding turn-taking, sentence structure, verb tense, lexical
choice, coherence and cohesion, aspects which help analysts to identify the
exact moments of shifts between states of powerfulness and powerlessness,
along with explanations of shifts of power relations between participants within
particular contexts. An application of this method of analysis can be seen in
Cheshmedzhieva-Stoycheva’s (2020a) research on the development of the image

of Ilhan Omar in American media.
Conclusion
In summary, the paper aims at providing a brief theoretical overview of the
principal research paradigms, key issues, procedures, data collection and
methods of analysis applied to the study of language. Research involves collecting
data, analyzing it and making inferences from analysis. General description
of qualitative, quantitative and mixed-method research is followed by more
detailed account of the three approaches. Specific for quantitative research is
going beyond the particular in the pursuit for generalizing the facts. In short,
quantitative research has strengths that are indisputable – it is systematic,
controlled, involving exact measurements resulting in reliable and generalized
results. The foremost feature of qualitative research is its emergent nature, i.e.
no aspect of the research design is predicted, the study is flexible and open
to new details that may emerge during the process. Mixed methods research
can be specified as a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods in a
single project. The two methods can supplement and inform each other, thus
providing higher quality results and better comprehension of a phenomenon.
Quality criteria in quantitative research are validity and reliability. Setting
quality standards in qualitative research is problematic because the study is
subjective, discursive and context-specific. Two taxonomies of quality criteria
in qualitative research are proposed. Lincoln and Guba suggest four components
that “trustworthiness” is composed of: credibility, transferability, dependability
and confirmability. Maxwell proposed five components of validity: descriptive,
interpretative, theoretical, evaluative validity and generalizability. The logical
way to do research includes generating the research questions, choosing the
design, then the method and the instruments allowing for the questions to
be answered. Realizing the possible outcomes of the investigation we can
narrow down the scope of the research purpose to “research hypotheses”.
The main and most frequently used tool and data collection method is the use
of questionnaire surveys. The efficiency of questionnaires is their foremost
strength for they make it possible for a large amount of data to be collected
and processed for a very short time. Qualitative data collection and analysis
are not two separate phases but are often circular and overlap. Various data
collection methods are considered: ethnography, interviews, focus groups
interviews, introspection, case studies and research journals. A central aspect
in qualitative data analysis is the reliance on objective intuition than following
formalized procedures. Qualitative content analysis is a deeper level of analysis
and interpretation of the underlying meaning of the data. Grounded theory has
grown into the “mainstream” and many of its theoretical aspects have turned
into “core issues” in qualitative research. The principal aim of the method is
to create a new theory framed on the basis of empirical data. There are two
main fields of discourse-analytical methodology: microanalytical, dealing with
“the finer detail” of linguistic interactions and macroanalytical, which consider
how social processes work through language. The most significant in the field
are: Conversation analysis, Discourse analysis, Critical discourse analysis and
Feminist Post-Structuralist Discourse analysis. The different discourse-analytic
approaches, positioned within different paradigms, are likely to produce varying
accounts of the same data thus producing richer and complex insights within
linguistic research.
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TO DISTORT OR NOT TO DISTORT: COMPARATIVE
ANALYSIS OF BRITISH AND BULGARIAN MEDIA
DISCOURSE REPRESENTATIONS OF FIRE DISASTERS
Ivaylo Gorchev
Department of English Studies, Konstantin Preslavsky University of Shumen, Shumen, Bulgaria
Abstract: Using a comparative approach and utilising a slightly refined version of

a framework for discourse representation analysis used by Norman Fairclough, the
article aims to study the discourse representations of the public inquiry of the Grenfell
Tower Fire and a press conference of the railway carrier Bulmarket concerning
the Hitrino train derailment and subsequent fiery explosion by the British and the
Bulgarian media respectively, with the intent of identifying the extent of deviation from
the original sources in the reporting texts and the use of devices for controlling the
reader’s perception of the reported discourses. The research shows that the Bulgarian
newspapers have adopted to a higher degree the position of interpreters between their
readers and the reported sources, since they are less committed to represent the exact
form of secondary discourse, even when demarcated as a verbatim quotation and tend
to shape its perception by contextualising it within stylistic devices, which allow them
to predispose its interpretation by their readers. However, even the British media
commitment is not absolute in this respect, as instances of distortions of the secondary
discourse and transmissions of the authority of the quoted sources in their texts are
also observed, even though to a lesser extent.
Key words: discourse representation, primary discourse, secondary discourse,
objectivity, CDA
__________________________
About the author: Ivaylo Gorchev is a PhD candidate at the Department of English Studies at Konstantin
Preslavsky University of Shumen. He obtained his Bachelor’s degree, major “English Philology” in
2001 and in 2018, he received his MA degree, major “English Philology – English Studies and Mass
Communications” from the same university. The topic of his PhD thesis is “Analysis of the Bulgarian
and the British media discourse on catastrophic events (a Comparative Study)”. He is currently a teacher
of English at Nikola Yonkov Vaptsarov Foreign Language School, Shumen. His interests include media
discourse research on media objectivity and conceptual metaphors. He is also interested in foreign
language teaching and music production.
e-mail: ivlg@abv.bg ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5023-9552
Copyright © 2021 Ivaylo Gorchev
Article history: Received: 18 October 2020; Reviewed: 1 March 2021; Revised: 23 March 2021;
Citation (APA): Gorchev, I. (2021). To distort or not to distort: Comparative analysis of British and
Bulgarian media discourse representations of fire disasters. Studies in Linguistics, Culture, and FLT, 9(1),
83-111. doi: 10.46687/SILC.2021.v09i01.005.
Introduction
The search for truth epitomised by Pontius Pilate’s question Quid est veritas?
is an everlasting effort on the part of the investigative journalism, where
journalists in the face of considerable danger for their own lives take on the
role of investigators of the hidden agenda of people in power and expose their
backstage deals, which may result in the resignation of some political figures, like
in the case of Richard Nixon and the investigative reporting of Carl Bernstein
and Bob Woodward during the Watergate scandal.
At the other end of the continuum stands the gutter press, where truthful
reporting is neither present nor expected. Even when the serious press is taken
into consideration, the majority of newspaper articles are not investigative in
their nature, but rather have an informative function, where the general public is
either presented with some new information or publicly expressed opinions. In
Framing Muslims in the Bulgarian and the British Media Discourse Desislava
Cheshmedzieva-Stoycheva (2018, p. 1) states that the tendency of people in
general to use their own point of view when presenting information makes
researchers “conclude that objective reporting of reality is virtually impossible”
and that newspapers tend to conform to “the policy of the organisations that
own them” in their ways of presenting news and events so that their focus is “on
aspects responding to that policy” (ibid., p. 3). Similar opinion is expressed by
van Dijk (2000), as well as by Fowler (1991) and McNair (2008), among others.
Thus, journalists tend to opt for particular lexical items or constructions from a
set of available options, which allow them to shape their reader’s perception of
the reported events in accordance with this policy.
The aim of the paper is to conduct a comparative analysis on the discourse
representations in two British and two Bulgarian newspapers of the oral and
written discourses concerning two catastrophic events, which happened 6
months apart in the Republic of Bulgaria and the United Kingdom and initiated
inquiries in their respective countries of origin. The Hitrino train derailment
took place on the 10th December 2016 and caused a subsequent explosion and
fire in Hitrino, with a death toll of 7 and 29 heavily injured residents of Hitrino
as well as 1 heavily injured employee (post switchman), while the Grenfell
Tower Fire in London occurred on 14th of June 2017 and caused the death of 72
inhabitants of the tower block. The main intent of the article is the identification
of the extent of deviation from the original sources in the reporting texts.
Corpus and Methods of Analysis

The corpus used for the research consists of four articles excerpted from the
electronic databases of Dnevnik (D) and 24 Chasa (24 Ch) for the Bulgarian
media discourse and The Guardian (G) and The Sun (S) for the British media
discourse. The Bulgarian articles published on 24th January 2020 report a press
conference given by Svetoslav Parvanov, the deputy manager of the railway

carrier Bulmarket, after the announcement on 22nd January 2020 of the prison
sentences imposed on the train drivers held responsible for the derailment of
freight train No. 90570 in Hitrino. The English articles were published on 4th
June 2018 by The Guardian and on 5th June by The Sun report the hearing of
Grenfell Tower Inquiry held on 4th June 2018 as well as some documents sent
to the inquiry and published on the website of the inquiry on the same day. The
whole press conference of Bulmarket was published on the YouTube Channel
of RuseMedia and has been retrieved and transcribed, so that the discourse
representation in the Bulgarian media can be compared with the original source,
something most readers are not in the position to do, while the official transcript
and video footage of the hearing of Grenfell Tower Inquiry on 4th June 2018
together with the quoted documents including Dr Barbara Lane’s report, Prof
Jose Torero’s report and Colin Todd’s report, published on the website of the
inquiry, have been retrieved to the same end.
For the purposes of the analysis, the study utilizes a slightly refined version of a
framework for discourse representation used by Norman Fairclough (1995, pp.
54-61), based on the accounts of discourse representation in Leech and Short
(1981), McHale (1978), Quirk et al. (1972) and Volosinov (1973), as well as the
principles of the systemic functional theory proposed by M. A. K. Halliday
(1978) and John R. Searle’s Speech Acts (1969).
The term discourse representation is used instead of the more common term
speech reporting because not only speech may be represented, but writing as
well, and also instead of a transparent reporting of the represented sources, very
often an interpretation of these sources is observed. Terminologically, the voice
of the reporter is designated by the phrase primary discourse, while the actual
words quoted by the reporter – as secondary discourse. Conceptually, first, the
possibility that primary and secondary discourse can be, on the one hand, clearly
differentiated from each other, and on the other, merged to different degrees
is taken into account in the framework. Second, the fact that apart from the
message (ideational meaning in Hallidayan terms), some stylistic and expressive
meanings of secondary discourse can also be accounted for (the so-called
interpersonal meanings in Hallidayan terms). Third, the possibility that the
interpretation of secondary discourse may be controlled by its contextualization
(stylistic or situational) in primary discourse is also considered. The framework
has five parameters: mode, boundary maintenance, stylisticity, situationality
and setting (Fairclough, 1995, pp. 54-61).
The differentiation of primary and secondary discourse can be seen from two
perspectives. On the one hand, typographically, the primary and secondary
discourse should be demarcated by using punctuation and other grammatical
conventions. This is reflected in the first parameter of the framework called
Mode, i.e the way in which secondary discourse is incorporated in primary

discourse.
The framework, according to Fairclough (1995, pp. 54-61) incorporates four
types of mode: 1. Direct Discourse (DD), where the secondary discourse
is clearly differentiated from the primary discourse, using typographical
features, e.g. Mrs Thatcher warned Cabinet colleagues: ‘I will not stand for
any backsliding’; 2. Indirect Discourse (ID), where the secondary discourse
is introduced through subordination to the reporting clause in the form of a
that-clause, with all the necessary changes, like a removal of the quotation
marks, a shift from first and second person pronouns to third person pronouns,
shift of adverbials, deictics and verbs of movement (for instance come becomes
go) and backshift of tenses, e.g. Mrs Thatcher warned Cabinet colleagues
that she would not stand for any backsliding1; 3. Direct Discourse Slipping
(DD(S)), where just part of the primary discourse is designated typographically
as secondary discourse, i.e. the representation of secondary discourse starts
as one type (for example ID) and then ‘slips’ into another one (DD(S)), e.g.
Mrs Thatcher warned Cabinet colleagues that she would ‘not stand for any
backsliding’, (such sentences are coded twice – once for the mode they start
in and once for the mode they slip in, which is DD(S)); and 4. Unsignalled
(UNSIG), where what is clearly secondary discourse has not been typologically
designated as secondary discourse, for example: Mrs Thatcher will not stand
for any backsliding used as a headline. UNSIG includes a variant of indirect
discourse, where the reporting clause is omitted, and the potentialities of
indirect-discourse sentence structure are retained. The latter is defined by Quirk
et al. (1972, p. 644) as Free Indirect Speech, e.g: Mrs Thatcher would not stand
for any backsliding. A fifth mode, called Indirect Discourse Slipping (ID(S)),
not incorporated by Fairclough (1995) is introduced, due to its existence in the
Bulgarian media discourse. It is characterized by being distributed between two
sentences, with the first sentence representing the secondary discourse as if it is
primary discourse (in UNSIGN) and the second sentence introducing the source
of the first sentence (in ID(S)), e.g: Преустановяват се всички културни и
развлекателни мероприятия на територията на област Варна, като
мярка за ограничаването на заразата от коронавирус. Това съобщи на
редовен брифинг пред журналисти областният управител Стоян Пасев.
(All cultural and entertainment events on the territory of Varna district are
suspended as a measure to limit the spread of coronavirus infection. This is
what the regional governor Stoyan Pasev announced to journalists at a regular
1. In Bulgarian the reported clause is introduced with the help of the conjunctions да and че
and the tenses are changed into reported verb forms (преизказни глаголни форми), which
denote that the speaker has not witnessed the described events but has heard about them
from another person. (Pashov, 1989, pp. 371, 150)
briefing2 .) The reason for the introduction of this mode is the impossibility
of coding the second sentence only within the framework incorporated by
Fairclough (1995).
The second angle from which the differentiation of primary and secondary
discourse can be viewed is the one connected with the commitment to the
faithful representation of the secondary discourse by not changing or allowing
it to impose its authority on the primary discourse. The latter is reflected in
the second parameter of the framework, namely Boundary maintenance
(Fairclough, 1995, p. 58). With respect to deviations from that commitment,
there are two possibilities. On the one hand, secondary discourse can be
translated into the voice of the reported through vocabulary and other changes,
like when the Labour leader Neil Kinnock says, ‘Margaret Thatcher must
resign’ and it appears in an article as ‘Maggie must get out’. This is considered
a case of incorporation. Alternatively, secondary discourse can invade primary
discourse and be presented as such. In this case we observe dissemination.
It can be exemplified when the words of Neil Kinnock are presented as the
words of the reporter in a newspaper headline, which reads: Margaret Thatcher
must resign. Even though dissemination is normally observed in UNSIG, it is
also possible to occur in other modes, as well. For example, in the following
sentence, which is ID: Margaret Thatcher must resign, says Kinnock, the word
order, which deviates from the more straightforward one: Kinnock says that
Margaret Thatcher must resign, signifies dissemination, because by placing the
secondary discourse in initial position it is put in focus and thus made salient,
which results in the preservation of its authority. It should be kept in mind that
both incorporation and dissemination can be observed in one and the same
sentence despite them seeming to be opposite tendencies, like in Maggie must
get out, says Kinnock, where the words of Neil Kinnock are both translated
and their authority is kept in the primary discourse by putting the secondary
discourse in initial position and thus foregrounding it, while backgrounding the
primary discourse by placing it in final position.
As already mentioned, the framework accounts for the possibility that not only
the message (ideational meaning in Hallidayan terms) of secondary discourse
can be represented but also its stylistic and expressive side (interpersonal
meanings in Hallidayan terms). Halliday (1978, pp. 112-113) adopts a ternary3
interpretation of language, postulating that it consists of three strata, which
are realized in the three metafunctions: the ideational (further subdivided
into experiential and logical), the interpersonal and the textual one. From
the perspective of the ideational function the speaker (writer) is viewed as an
2. All translations of the original texts in Bulgarian are done by the author.
3. Having three elements, parts, or divisions.
observer who uses language “about something” to encode his/her own “cultural
experience” concerning “the things that are already encoded as facts and as
reports” (ibid., p. 112). From the perspective of the interpersonal function the
speaker (writer) is viewed as an intruder, who through the expression of his/
her own attitudes and judgements tries to influence both the attitudes and the
behavior of others. The relationships concerning the roles of the participants in
the particular situation, which include the ones defined by language itself, are
expressed through this component. The textual component enables the speaker
to actualize the ideational and interpersonal meanings so that language is made
relevant to the context of situation. The representation of the interpersonal
meaning of secondary discourse is accounted for in the parameter stylisticity.
No interaction takes place in a vacuum but in a specific social environment.
According to Halliday (1978, p. 33) the context of situation can be described
through the notions of field of discourse, tenor of discourse and mode of
discourse. The field of discourse refers to the institutional setting where the
specific language use takes place, which includes the social activity the speaker
and hearer are a part of, as well as the subject matter. It could be a domestic
environment for a casual family conversation on wrongdoing, or a court room
for a barrister’s speech concerning manslaughter. The tenor of discourse
concerns the role relationships between the participants in the interaction: a
mother and child in the domestic environment and a barrister, a judge, a jury
in the legal context. The mode of discourse refers to the chosen channel of
communication. It is the spoken medium for both situations, but the chosen
register differs significantly between the two of them, colloquial speech for the
domestic one and formal language for the legal one. The extent to which the
context of situation of secondary discourse is represented is accounted for in
the parameter situationality.
It should be noted that both stylisticity and situationality can be used as a vehicle
for the contextualization of secondary discourse with a view to controlling its
interpretation by the speaker (writer) i.e. they can be used as setting devices.
Setting is the last parameter in the framework, relating to “the extent to which
and ways in which reader’s/listener’s interpretation of secondary discourse is
controlled by placing it in particular context (or ‘cotext’)” (Fairclough, 1995, p.
60). A number of setting devices can be employed in discourse representation.
One of them is the representation of the illocutionary force of the secondary
discourse. According to Searle (1969, pp. 23-25), while speaking one performs
different types of acts. By uttering words, an utterance act is performed. When
an item or an abstraction is referred to and something is predicated about it, a
propositional act is performed. Even though different utterances may refer to the
same item or abstraction and predicate the same thing about them, simultaneously,
some other acts may be performed, such as stating, questioning, commanding,
promising etc. In these cases, different illocutionary acts are performed. By
performing illocutionary acts, the speaker can exert certain effects on the hearer,
for instance by arguing, one can persuade somebody, or by warning someone,
one can alarm that person. Such acts are recognized as perlocutionary acts.
Searle distinguishes between the illocutionary act and the propositional content
of that act, noting that some acts may not have a propositional content, like
Hurrah or Ouch. In an illocutionary act with a propositional content there are
prepositional indicators and illocutionary force indicators. Word order, stress,
intonation contour, punctuation, the mood of the verb, and the performative
verbs are some of the devices that indicate the illocutionary force of an utterance
(Searle, 1969, pp. 29, 30). Searle proposes a classification of illocutionary acts
which takes into account Austin’s classification of illocutionary acts into his five
basic categories of verdictive, expositive, exercitive, behabitive, and commissive
but addresses its inadequacies. Searle’s classification recognizes five categories
of speech acts, which are representative, directive, commissive, expressive and
declarations. Illocutionary acts are thought to differ on at least twelve significant
dimensions of variation, three of which are used for the description of all five
illocutionary acts and are point (or purpose) of the act, direction of fit of the words
and the world and expressed psychological states. Representative illocutionary
acts have as point of the act the commitment of the speaker to the truth of the
expressed proposition, the direction of fit is words fitting the world (express
that something is the case) and the expressed psychological state is Belief (that
proposition). Directives have as point of act an attempt to get the hearer to do
something, the direction of fit is the world fitting the words (the actions of the
hearer should follow the words of the speaker), the expressed psychological
state is Want (or wish, desire). Commissive illocutionary acts have as point
of the act a commitment of the speaker to some future course of action, the
direction is again the world fits the words and the expressed psychological state
is Intention. Expressive illocutionary acts have as a point the expression of the
psychological state specified in the sincerity condition (e.g. I apologize) about a
state of affairs specified in the propositional content (for being late), there is no
direction of fit, expressed psychological states can vary. With declaratives the
point is the alteration of the state of something, the utterance of a declaration
brings about a fit which is both words fit the world and the world fits the words
and there is no sincerity condition. In order for a declarative illocutionary
act to be performed successfully the speaker should have a special position
within an institution. It is important to note that Searle’s classification is one of
illocutionary acts and not of illocutionary verbs. He says that verbs like insist
or suggest can be used for the performance of different illocutionary acts. He
points out that, for example, I insist that we go to the movies and I insist that the
answer is found on p.16 express two different illocutionary acts, directive, and
representative, respectively. He also explains that if we substitute insist with
suggest in any of the sentences, this will not render a different illocutionary
act but only the intensity with which the illocutionary point is presented will
be changed (see Searle, 1976). Searle does not discuss illocutionary acts with
respect to discourse reporting but Caldas-Coulthard (1994) postulates that the
choice of a reporting (or quoting) verb used to introduce the secondary discourse
can be of a paramount importance for the secondary discourse interpretation.
She distinguishes between speech-reporting verbs, descriptive verbs, and
transcript verbs. Speech-reporting verbs can be neutral structuring verbs (say,
tell, ask, enquire), metapropositional verbs, and metalinguistic verbs (narrate,
quote, recount). Metapropositional verbs are further subdivided into assertives
(remark, explain, agree, announce etc.), directives (urge, instruct, order) and
expressives (accuse, complain, claim). Descriptive verbs, which can be prosodic
(cry, intone, shout) or paralinguistic, which can be further subdivided into voice
qualifiers, connoting manner (whisper, murmur, mutter) or voice qualification,
connoting attitude (laugh, giggle, sigh, gasp, groan). Transcript verbs can signal
the relation to other parts of discourse (repeat, echo, add, amend), or the progress
of discourse (pause, go on, hesitate, continue). The reporter does not presuppose
the interpretation of the secondary discourse, when it is introduced with a neutral
structuring verb, and the illocutionary force of the secondary discourse has to
be derived from the quoted utterances without any assistance from the reporter
of the utterance and this renders unbiased, transparent reporting. On the other
hand, the presence of the author in the text can be conveyed by the illocutionary
glossing verbs, which make the illocutionary force of the quote explicit (see
Caldas-Coulthard, 1994, pp. 305-306). According to Machin and Mayr (2012,
pp. 57-58) the same complaint introduced with the verb whinged (which is an
expressive) as opposed to the more neutral say can undermine the credibility of
the statement and the person who has uttered it by giving the impression that
the complaint is more of a natural result of the speaker’s character. Conversely,
if the statement is introduced with the verb announce (which is an assertive),
much more legitimacy will be ascribed to it. While analysing the representation
of a statement made by Tony Blair concerning the Iraq war, where he had said
that Britain would ultimately be able to look back on the conflict with ‘immense
pride’, which was introduced with the verb insist, Machin and Mayr say that
the use of that verb gives an impression of a man who lacks confidence and
credibility. They support their position by giving a pair of examples, where
a librarian explains that a student must return a book immediately vs insists
that a student must return a book immediately. In the first case the librarian
explains rules and their authority is clear, while in the second case their
authority is challenged (Machin & Mayr, 2012, pp. 63-64). In conjunction with
the reporting verb, style adjuncts can also be used as setting devices to control
the interpretation of the secondary discourse. Last but not least, formulation
(Heritage & Watson, 1979), i.e. “a summarizing gist of the secondary discourse
before it occurs in a fuller representation” is another potential setting device

(Fairclough, 1995, p. 61).
Analysis
The four articles have been analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively.
With respect to the quantitative analysis of the discourse representation, two
fundamental questions are of paramount importance: a) what constitutes an
instance of secondary discourse representation and b) what determines the
boundaries of each instance so that an objective comparison between the
articles is drawn. As for the first question an instance of secondary discourse
representation is any representation of ideas based on the source materials no
matter if these representations are marked as secondary discourse or not, for
example: at the hearing, a video footage with the burning tower is shown, where
certain more or less shocking utterances are heard and both newspapers report
some of them. Since these utterances are not present in the official transcript
of the hearing, these have not been considered to be instances of discourse
representation and have been excluded from the analysis.
As for the second question, because complete thoughts are typographically
demarcated as separate sentences, the boundaries of an instance in most cases
are thought to coincide with the boundaries of a sentence. This means that
most instances are single sentences. However, there are a few cases, where one
complete thought stretches between two adjacent sentences, which could have
been combined in a single compound sentence. Such pairs have been coded as
a single instance. When, typographically, secondary discourse is demarcated
as such with quotation marks, the boundaries are determined by the quotation
marks and thus there are cases where up to six sentences are presented between
two quotation marks in the Bulgarian media discourse and those have been
considered a single instance. Each case of DD(S) or ID(S) is counted two times
– the mode it starts in and the mode it slips in. For the former, it is usually ID
or UNSIG / DD(S), while for the latter, it is USIGN/ ID(S). The analysis will be
organized by consecutively examining each parameter from the framework and
the interaction between some of the parameters.
Table 1.
Mode of representation
BR BG BR and BG
The Guardian The Sun Monitor 24 Chasa
Newspapers Newspapers Newspapers
No. % No. % No. % No. % No. % No. % No. %
ID 18/37 49 7/30 23 25/67 37 3/10 30 8/24 33 11/34 32 36/101 36
ID(S) 0/37 0 0/30 0 0/67 0 1/10 10 1/24 4 2/34 6 2/101 2
DD 4/37 11 11/30 37 15/67 22 4/10 40 2/24 8 6/34 18 21/101 21

DD(S) 11/37 30 4/30 13 15/67 22 0/10 0 0/24 0 0/34 0 15/101 15
UNSIG 4/37 11 8/30 27 12/67 18 2/10 20 13/24 54 15/34 44 27/101 27
Table 1 summarizes the instances from the four newspaper articles both as exact
numbers relative to the total and as their corresponding percentage.
If the instances of Indirect Discourse (ID) are taken as a point of departure, it
is noticeable that the newspaper with the highest percentage of these (49%) is
The Guardian, while the one with the lowest percentage (23%) is The Sun. The
British newspapers have the edge over the Bulgarian ones, with 37% against
32%, respectively, when compared with each other, while the average for both
the British and the Bulgarian newspapers stands at 36% (36 instances out of 101),
which is the highest percentage figure in comparison to all the other modes. ID
is also the most frequently used mode by The Guardian, when looked at the
distribution of instances for each individual newspaper.
The newly introduced Indirect Discourse Slipping (ID(S)) is used only two
times in the two Bulgarian newspapers, and is not present in the two British
articles, which is probably the reason why it is not considered by Fairclough,
who analysed only the discourse representation by the British media. The fact
that it is used by both analysed Bulgarian newspapers shows that it might be one
specific Bulgarian way of discourse representation.
Direct Discourse representation (DD) is the third most common mode of
representation, when all four newspapers are taken into account and for 24
Chasa taken individually, and it shares the third place together with UNSIG for
The Guardian, while it is the first most common mode for The Sun and Monitor.
With respect to the Bulgarian vs the British usage it takes second and third
place, respectively.
Direct Discourse Slipping (DD(S)) is only characteristic of the British articles
in the corpus. It is not manifested in the Bulgarian articles. DD(S) is the second
most common mode used for discourse representation in the articles excerpted
from The Guardian, while only 13% of all the instances in The Sun exhibit the
application of this mode.
UNSIG is the second most commonly used mode (27% of all instances) by the
four newspapers. However, the Bulgarian media (44%) have relied on that mode
almost two and a half times more than the British media (18%), with 24 Chasa
using it in more than a half of all its instances of discourse representation.
Table 2.
Boundary Maintenance
BG BR and BG
The Guardian The Sun BR Newspapers Monitor 24 Chasa
Newspapers Newspapers
No. % No. % No. % No. % No. % No. % No. %

1. - 7/26 27 3/26 12 10/52 19 2/9 22 2/23 9 4/32 13 14/84 17
2.DISS 1/26 4 3/26 12 4/52 8 1/9 11 1/23 4 2/32 6 6/84 7
3.INC/DISS 8/26 31 10/26 38 18/52 35 5/9 56 19/23 83 24/32 75 42/84 50
4.INC 10/26 38 10/26 38 20/52 38 1/9 11 1/23 4 2/32 6 22/84 26
Concerning the commitment of the media to represent the secondary discourse as

faithfully as possible, now, we turn to Table 2, which summarizes the quantitative
findings of the research with respect to the distribution of the instances of
incorporation and dissemination between the individual newspapers, as well as
the British media discourse vs the Bulgarian media discourse. A look at the first
row of the table, which shows the number and the percentage of instances, where
the secondary discourse has been represented faithfully (no incorporation, nor
dissemination), reveals that less than two fifths (17%) of all the instances do not
show any alteration of the secondary discourse or preservation of its authority
in the primary discourse. It is also evident that the averages for the British
(19%) and the Bulgarian discourse (13%) have a difference of 6%, with The
Guardian (27%) and Monitor (22%) being much more committed to the faithful
representation of the quoted sources than The Sun (12%) and 24 Chasa (9%).
If we look at the deviations from the commitment to faithful representation
of the secondary discourse, we will notice that the instances showing only
dissemination are 7% on average for the four newspapers, with The Sun having
the highest percentage (12%), The Guardian (4%) and 24 Chasa (4%) – the
lowest, while Monitor (11%) is right between them. The average for the British
newspapers is 8%, and for the Bulgarian newspapers 6%. However, when the
percentage of the instances which show only dissemination is added to the
percentage of the instances showcasing both incorporation and dissemination,
the percentage for all the four newspapers stands at 57%. The combined number
for the British media discourse is slightly lower at 43%, while for the Bulgarian
media discourse that number stands at 81%. It shows that the Bulgarian media
tends to preserve and transmit the authority of the quoted sources more than
twice as much as the British media.
With respect to the instances of alteration of secondary discourse, 26% of the
instances in all four newspapers exhibit only incorporation and additionally
50% include both incorporation and dissemination. It means the secondary
discourse has been altered in some way in 76% of the instances in the four
newspapers. These figures stand at 73% for the British newspapers and 81% for
the Bulgarian ones, which shows that the Bulgarian media are more inclined
to alter the secondary discourse while representing it to its readership. Here
we can draw a diachronic comparison with the findings of Fairclough, which
are based on articles published in the UK in 1985 (some 33 years before the
articles used for the present research). Fairclough found out that 71% of the
instances from the five newspaper articles that he analysed show incorporation,
which is comparable to the 73% that were found out in the present research.
Unfortunately, it was not possible to find a previous study based on articles
from the Bulgarian media discourse to compare the findings of this research to,
so only a diachronic comparison of the findings for the British media discourse
was feasible. As for the individual newspapers, when the combined figures for
incorporation and incorporation plus dissemination are taken into account, it
becomes evident that The Sun (76%) is more inclined to alter the secondary
discourse than The Guardian (69%). For the Bulgarian media, 24 Chasa
with 87% of instances which involve incorporation and incorporation plus
dissemination show much more inclination towards alteration of the secondary
discourse than Monitor (67%). Taking into account the fact that The Guardian
and Monitor are considered more serious press than The Sun and 24 Chasa,
the observation that the latter have altered the secondary discourse to a greater
degree comes as no surprise, but it is also evident that even the more serious
press have not refrained from secondary discourse alteration.
Table 3.
Interaction between Indirect Discourse and Boundary Maintenance
INDIRECT DISCOURSE (ID)
The BG BR and BG
The Sun BR Newspapers Monitor 24 Chasa
Guardian Newspapers Newspapers
No. % No. % No. % No. % No. % No. % No. %
1. - 5/18 28 0/7 0 5/25 20 2/3 67 2/8 25 4/11 36 9/36 25
2.DISS 1/18 5 0/7 0 1/25 4 0/3 0 1/8 13 1/11 9 2/36 6
3.INC/DISS 3/18 17 1/7 14 4/25 16 0/3 0 4/8 50 4/11 36 8/36 22
4.INC 9/18 50 6/7 86 15/25 60 1/3 33 1/8 13 2/11 18 17/36 47
It is interesting to see the interaction between the parameters mode of

representation and boundary maintenance, which is shown in tabular fashion
above. With respect to Indirect Discourse, 20% of the instances from the
British newspapers and 36% from the Bulgarian ones, which equals to 25%
in the combined figure, have represented the secondary discourse without any
alteration or preservation of its authority. As for the individual newspapers The
Guardian (28%) and Monitor (67%) have a much larger percentage of instances
without any alteration, than The Sun (0%) and 24 Chasa (25%), respectively.
The Bulgarian media have shown less deviation from the commitment to
faithful representation of the secondary discourse through the mode Indirect
Discourse. Here is an example excerpted from Monitor, which shows ID with

no incorporation or dissemination, together with the paragraph from the press
conference, which has been reported:
[1] Първанов посочи, че пет пъти от „Булмаркет“ са подавани молби
до прокуратурата за изземване и съхраняване на елементи от
стрелка номер 5, железния път и траверсите, но е получаван писмен
отказ (Parvanov pointed out that five times Bulmarket had submitted
requests to the prosecutor’s office for seizure and storage of elements
from arrow No 5, the railway and the sleepers, but a written refusal had
been received). (М4/24.01.20); [2] Булмаркет Рейл Карго подаде пет
писмени молби тогава до прокуратурата да се изземат и съхранят
елементи от стрелка номер пет от железния път и от траверсите.
На тези пет молби има писмен отказ да се извърши това действие.
(Then Bulmarket Rail Cargo submitted five written requests to the
prosecutor’s office for elements of arrow No five from the railway and
from the sleepers to be expropriated and stored. These five requests were
turned down in writing.) (PC).
Example [1], which reports [2] has a neutral word order, with an introductory
clause, followed by a reporting clause introduced with the conjunction че (that).
The verbs in the reporting clause are in the expected special reporting tenses,
which show that the person who reports the statement has not witnessed it. The
journalist who reports Parvanov’s words distances himself from the reported
statements and thus does not preserve the authority of the secondary discourse.
What is more, there are not any vocabulary changes in the reported sentence.
However, the single reported sentence represents two sentences in the secondary
discourse and thus this proves Fairclough’s observation (1995, p. 56) that ID
does not always express a commitment to representation of the full ideational
meaning of the secondary discourse.
Let us now turn to the interaction between Indirect Discourse and dissemination.
The combination of Indirect Discourse and dissemination without incorporation
is quite rare – 6% for the four newspapers altogether, 4% for the British media
discourse and 9% for the Bulgarian media discourse. There are only two
instances showing that combination in The Guardian and 24 Chasa. Here is
the example from 24 Chasa, together with the source sentences from the press
conference:
4. The abbreviations used in this analysis are as follows: “M” stands for Monitor; “G” – The
Guardian; “PC” stands for the press conference of Bulmarket in the town of Ruse; “24 Ch”
stands for 24 Chasa; “I” stands for the transcript of the hearing of Grenfell Fire Inquiry
held on 4th June 2018; “DBL” stands for Dr Barbara Lane Report published on the site of the
inquiry on 4th June 2018; “c” – caption; “S” – The Sun“; /h/” stands for headline;
[3] Лошото състояние на жп-мрежата е причинило инцидента в

Хитрино, твърдят от БУЛМАРКЕТ (The bad condition of the railway
network caused the incident in Hitrino, BULMARKET claims) /h/
(24Ch/24.01.20); [4] Според заключенията от последните експертизи по
делото в Шуменския окръжен съд, ааа… състоянието на железопътната
инфраструктура е изключително лошо… Убедени сме, че основната
причина е състоянието на железопътната инфраструктура и че трябва
да се вземат спешни мерки за предотвратяване на бъдещи инциденти
(According to the conclusions of the latest expert reports on the case in the
Shumen District Court, er… the condition of the railway infrastructure is
extremely bad… We are convinced that the main reason is the condition
of the railway infrastructure and that urgent measures must be taken to
prevent future incidents). (PC).
First of all, here the word order deviates from the neutral word order of example
[1], where the primary discourse introduces the secondary discourse. In [3]
it is the secondary discourse which comes first in the sentence and is put in
focus and thus its authority is allowed to dominate, with the primary discourse,
which is still present, coming almost as an afterthought and whose authority
is consequently weakened. The tense of the verb in the reporting clause is the
expected special reporting tense, showing that the journalist reports something
heard but not witnessed, which weakens the preserved authority of the secondary
discourse to a certain extent. Similarly to the previous example, the reported
sentence [3] combines information from two different sentences from the press
conference, e.g. [4], which are a few sentences apart from each other giving
further evidence for the observation of Fairclough (1995, p. 56) mentioned
earlier that ID does not always express a commitment to representation of the
full ideational meaning of the secondary discourse. Example [3] shows the
contextualisation of the secondary discourse with the help of the reporting verb,
which will be discussed in the section concerning the parameter setting.
Looking at the interaction between Indirect Discourse and incorporation plus
dissemination, we can see that 22% of all the instances of Indirect Discourse in
the four newspapers exhibit incorporation plus dissemination. In relative terms,
the Bulgarian newspapers have a much higher incidence (36%) than the British
media (16%), but in absolute terms they have the same number of instances. The
Guardian has three instances, The Sun has one and 24 Chasa has four. Let us
look at example [5] from The Guardian, which is based on examples 6-9 from
the hearing of the inquiry into the fire and from Dr Barbara Lane’s report:
[5] Serious fire safety breaches at Grenfell Tower included over 100 non-
compliant fire doors, a fire fighting lift that didn’t work and a “stay put”
policy that totally failed, the inquiry into the disaster has been told. (G/
04.06.2018); [6] This was a programme of works which were intended
to replace 106 flat entrance doors with fire doors which complied with
relevant fire safe standards. (I); [7] I have found that the flat entrance fire
doors which were installed, were not in compliant with the relevant test
evidence provided. (DBL); [8] Evidence is beginning to emerge that the
first crew at the scene discovered that the firefighter switch for the lifts,
which would give the London Fire Brigade sole control over the lifts, was
not operational (I). [9] I consider the Stay Put strategy required from the
Building condition, to have effectively failed by 01:26 (DBL).
Similarly to example [3], example [5] shows the same deviation from the word
order of a neutral Indirect Discourse sentence but here the tenses in the fronted
reporting clause have not been back shifted and thus more of the authority of
the secondary discourse is preserved in comparison with [3], which shows the
adoption of the expected reporting tenses in Bulgarian. Example [5] reports
four sentences from two original sources and is the strongest proof so far of
Fairclough’s observation that ID does not always express the full ideational
meaning of secondary discourse. Example [5] also shows incorporation, where
the substitution of the exact number 106 with over 100, the firefighter switch
for the lifts with fire fighting lift and the adverb effectively with totally are
vocabulary changes that have been made to the original lines.
As is seen from Table 3, the combination of Indirect Discourse and incorporation
covers almost half of all the instances of Indirect Discourse in the four
newspapers. It is especially prominent in The Sun, where all the instances of ID
include either incorporation (86%) or incorporation and dissemination (14%).
The following example, which shows ID with incorporation is excerpted from
The Sun:
[10] The public inquiry into the disaster heard today there were a catalogue
of safety failings in the West London tower block /c/ (S/05.06.2018);
[11] However, the number of non-compliances signify a culture of non-
compliance at Grenfell Tower (DBL).
Example [10] is a caption under a picture showing the whole tower alit with thick
black smoke coming out of it. This instance shows the substitution of a culture
from Dr Lane’s report with a catalogue in The Sun’s article and the substitution
of non-compliances with safety failings. A look at the dictionary definitions of
culture and catalogue is revealing about the motivation for this substitution.
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English defines culture as “the attitudes
and beliefs about something that are shared by a particular group of people or in
a particular organization” (LDCE 2003, p. 382) and a catalogue of as “a series
of mistakes, crimes etc that happen one after the other and never seem to stop”.
As seen, despite denoting similar ideas, the connotative layers of culture and
catalogue definitely differ, with catalogue pointing into the direction of crime
and wrongdoing.
Now, let us focus on the interaction between Direct Discourse and Boundary
Maintenance, which is represented in Table 4.
Table 4.
Interaction between Direct Discourse and Boundary Maintenance
DIRECT DISCOURSE (DD)
BG BR and BG
The Guardian The Sun BR Newspapers Monitor 24 Chasa
Newspapers Newspapers
No. % No. % No. % No. % No. % No. % No. %
1. - 2/4 50 3/11 27 5/15 33 0/4 0 0/2 0 0/6 0 5/21 24
2.DISS 0/4 0 3/11 27 3/15 20 1/4 25 0/2 0 1/6 17 4/21 19
3.INC/DISS 1/4 25 1/11 9 2/15 13 3/4 75 2/2 100 5/6 83 7/21 33
4.INC 1/4 25 4/11 36 5/15 33 0/4 0 0/2 0 0/6 0 5/21 24
The number of instances in DD, which do not exhibit any form of incorporation
or dissemination equals 24% (5 out of 21 instances) for the combined instances
from the British and the Bulgarian media discourse, while for the Bulgarian
newspapers it is 0% (0 out of 6) and for the British ones it is 33% (5 out of
15), which shows that the British newspapers show a higher commitment to
the faithful representation of the secondary discourse without any alteration
or preservation of its authority when Direct Discourse is concerned, which
is in stark contrast with the situation concerning Indirect Discourse, which
showed the reversed trend. When the individual newspapers are looked at, The
Guardian (50%) stands out as the one with the highest commitment, while 25
Chasa (0%) and Monitor (0%) show the lowest commitment, with The Sun (27%)
coming in between, which presents us with some evidence that possibly even
the representatives of the British gutter press have a higher level of objective
representation of secondary discourse than the Bulgarian newspapers, which
are considered a more serious press, like Monitor.
[12] Referring to the “stay put” advice, he said: “It may be that the formal
maintenance of that advice until 2.47 am made all the difference between
life and death” (G/04.06.2018); [13] On the other hand, it may be that the
formal maintenance of that advice until 2.47 am made all the difference
between life and death (I).
Example [12], extracted from The Guardian, shows DD without any alteration
or dissemination. It starts with introductory primary discourse and clearly
marks where the secondary discourse begins and ends. Between the quotation
marks the secondary discourse from [13] is represented verbatim without any
changes. This instance exemplifies what one expects when they look at a quoted
utterance, but, unfortunately, as is seen from the research results, such instances
are more of an exception that the norm.
A combination, which still keeps the secondary discourse unaltered is DD,

which shows only dissemination. Table 4 reveals that further 19% from the
instances in the four newspapers do not show alteration of the secondary
discourse but display preservation of its authority and the situation between
the British newspapers (20%) and the Bulgarian newspapers (17%) is not that
different.
[14] „Независимо с каква скорост се е движела влаковата композиция,
тя е можела да дерайлира. Убедени сме, че основната причина е
състоянието на железопътната инфраструктура и че трябва да се
вземат спешни мерки за предотвратяване на бъдещи инциденти“,
допълни той. (“No matter how fast the train had been moving, it could
have derailed. We are convinced that the main reason is the condition
prevent future accidents,” he added.) (M/24.01.20); [15]… независимо
с каква скорост се движи влаковата композиция, тя е могла да
дерайлира. Убедени сме, че основната причина е състоянието на
железопътната инфраструктура и че трябва да се вземат спешни
мерки за предотвратяване на бъдещи инциденти. (no matter how
fast the train had been moving, it could have derailed. We are convinced
that the main reason is the state of the railway infrastructure and that
urgent measures must be taken to prevent future accidents.) (PC).
In [14], taken from Monitor, which quotes [15], the placement of the reporting
verb after the reported string undermines the authority of the primary discourse
and thus the secondary discourse wields its authority.
If we look at the statistical data (Table 4), which shows the percentage of
instances that show alteration of the secondary discourse, we will see that 57%
of all instances in the four newspapers show incorporation within DD either
alone or in conjunction with dissemination, which contrasts sharply with what
Leech and Short (1981, p. 257) suggest concerning DD, namely that the person
who reports in direct discourse claims to report faithfully both what is said
and the exact words, which are used. These differences arise from the fact that
Leech and Short discuss Direct and Indirect Discourse in the light of fictional
literary works, while the findings of the present research concern media usage.
Even so, when quotations are concerned, what Leech and Short suggest is
the expected commitment and it is unfortunate that both the British and the
Bulgarian media have not completely committed to the faithful representation
of the exact form of the quoted utterances. It is fair to notice, though, that the
Bulgarian media with their 83% of deviation have shown twice less commitment
than the British media, which have 46% of instances with deviation. Here is an
example from The Sun, which shows the nature and the extent of deviation of
the published quotation in comparison with the original line from the transcript
of the inquiry:
[16] Mr Millet explained: “Polyethylene is combustible, which melts and
drips when exposed to heat” (S/05.06.18); [17] Now, polyethylene is a
combustible synthetic thermoplastic polymer which melts and drips upon
exposure to heat and which can also flow whilst burning. (I).
The omission of synthetic thermoplastic polymer and the substitution of the
prepositional phrase upon exposure to heat from the original line [17] with
when exposed to heat in example [16] shows some of the more significant
alterations of the quoted material, found in the British newspapers, which
involve small changes, such as omissions of words or articles and substitutions
of words or phrases, which can also be characteristic of some of the instances
of incorporation in the Bulgarian discourse. However, some of the examples
from the Bulgarian media show more radical changes, like the ones in example
[18], excerpted from 24 Chasa, which shows DD with both incorporation and
dissemination:
[18] „Търсеха се, изземаха се и се подлагаха на експертизи само
и единствено предмети, данни и факти, които са в подкрепа
на обвинителната теза. ... Дали причината за тенденциозното
разследване е оказания върху разследващия екип от НСлС натиск от
зам.-главния прокурор или причината е някъде другаде, е въпрос,
който също търси своя отговор“, допълни Първанов. (“Only objects,
data and facts that support the indictment were searched for, taken as
samples and subjected to expertise. … Whether the reason for the biased
investigation is the pressure exerted on the investigation team by the
Deputy Prosecutor General or the reason is somewhere else, is a question
that is also looking for its answer,” Parvanov added). (24 Ch/24.01.20).
What is interesting is the fact that none of the British newspapers have more
than two sentences in a single quotation, while 24 Chasa has two instances,
where either 5 or 6 sentences are quoted together. Example [18] is the five-
sentence quotation from 24 Chasa but to save space, only the first and the last
sentence from the quotation are given. Were all these sentences to have been
considered separately, the number of the instances of incorporation within DD
in the Bulgarian discourse representation would have soared. Similarly to some
of the previous examples, which show dissemination, here the placement of the
primary discourse clause at the end of the string allows the secondary discourse
to become more authoritative.
[19] В българското право, а и не само в българското право е
задължително провеждането на обективно и всестранно разследване,
което означава, че трябва да се събират факти и доказателства,
както в подкрепа на обвинителната теза, така и въобще в подкрепа

на каквато и да е друга теза. …Булмаркет Рейл Карго подаде пет
писмени молби тогава до прокуратурата да се изземат и съхранят
елементи от стрелка номер пет от железния път и от траверсите. На
тези пет молби има писмен отказ да се извърши това действие. Тези
вещи не са изземани, не се съхраняват никъде… естествено не могат
да се изследват. Дали причината за тенденциозното разследване
е оказания натиск върху разследващия екип от Националната
следствена служба, от заместник-главния прокурор или е някаква
друга причината, ние не знаем, но според мен този въпрос много
активно очаква своя отговор. (Under the Bulgarian legislation, and
not only under the Bulgarian legislation, it is mandatory to conduct an
objective and thorough investigation, which means that facts and evidence
must be collected, both in support of the accusatory thesis and in general
in support of any other thesis. … At the/ that time Bulmarket Rail Cargo
submitted five written requests to the prosecutor’s office for collection
and storage of samples from arrow No five, from the railway, and from
the sleepers. These five requests were refused in writing. These items are
not collected; they are not stored anywhere… of course they cannot be
examined. Whether the reason for the biased investigation is the pressure
exerted on the investigation team by the National Investigation Service,
the Deputy Prosecutor General or there is some other reason, we do
not know, but in my opinion this question is very actively awaiting its
answer.) (PC).
Now, let us compare example [18] with the original lines [19] from the press
conference to see the nature of the alterations which the secondary discourse has
undergone. First of all, it is clear that the first sentence from [18] in its entirety
has not been pronounced at the press conference but the gist of it by implication
can be found scattered around different sentences. The first sentence in [18] is
in the passive voice, which in Bulgarian can be formed in two different ways.
The first way, which is similar to the way the passive voice is formed in English
relies on the use of the auxiliary verb съм (be) which changes according to
the desired tense and the past participle of the finite verb, which denotes the
meaning. The second way, which is the one chosen for the first sentence in
example [18], relies on the use of the reflexive particle се added to the full verb.
The word order in the sentence is not the expected word order, which should
start with the noun group serving as the grammatical subject of the sentence
and then followed by the verb group. Here, the sentence starts with a verb group
and thus the actions denoted by the verb group are emphasized. The verb group
includes three full verbs rather than one, and the noun group consists of three
subjects. This is a concise sentence, which contains a lot of information in a very
small form factor, in most cases referring implicitly to at least three sentences
from the secondary discourse. The motivation for such a sentence is obvious: it
both saves space and presents the ideas from the secondary discourse in a clear
way. However, it shows a drastic change of the form of the secondary discourse,
while typographically, it is demarcated as representing the secondary discourse
without any alteration, and while incorporation within ID can be thought of as
being more expected, incorporation within DD is seen as a form of insincerity.
The last sentence from [18] is an example of a more moderate alteration in the
Bulgarian discourse.
Table 5.
Interaction between Direct Discourse and Boundary Maintenance
UNSIGNALLED (UNSIG)
BR BG BR and BG
No. % No. % No. % No. % No. % No. % No. %
1. - 0/4 0 0/8 0 0/12 0 0/2 0 0/13 0 0/15 0 0/27 0
2.DISS 0/4 0 0/8 0 0/12 0 0/2 0 0/13 0 0/15 0 0/27 0
3.INC/DISS 4/4 50 8/8 100 12/12 100 2/2 100 13/13 100 15/15 100 27/27 100
4.INC 0/4 50 0/8 0 0/12 0 0/2 0 0/13 0 0/15 0 0/27 0
As far as the interaction between UNSIG and Boundary Maintenance is

concerned all instances of UNSIG from the four newspapers involve both
incorporation and dissemination. Let us see four examples from each of the
newspapers. The first two examples are from the British media discourse.
[20] One survivors’ group has claimed in evidence to the inquiry that
many more people would have survived if the advice had been revoked
earlier. (G/04.06.2018); [21] Now, the submissions of the G3 group of
bereaved, survivors and residents assert at paragraph 68 that it is “beyond
argument” that many more would have survived than did survive if the
stay-put policy had been abandoned at 1.26 am, or at any rate long before
25 2.47 am. (I); [22] So far 135 written statements have been taken from
survivors and residents, including 60 people who escaped from the tower
on the night. (S/05.06.18); [23] As matters currently stand, the inquiry
has received a total of 135 written witness statements from bereaved,
survivors and residents; 60 from survivors who escaped the tower and 75
from other witnesses, including bereaved, residents who were not present
and observers. (I).
If example [20] from The Guardian is read without comparing it with lines
[21] from the transcript of the hearing, it is easy for anyone to be persuaded
into thinking that this is primary discourse reporting the opening statement
of lawyers representing some of the survivors during the hearing. It turns out
that this is Mr Millet – the only speaker (apart from the chairman Sir Martin
Moore-Bick) during the hearing, who first quotes written submissions from
the G3 group of bereaved, survivors and residents and then reacts to their
assertion, which is not presented here. In a very similar fashion example [22]
from The Sun presents the words of Mr Millet [23] reporting some statistical
data as primary discourse. As far as incorporation is concerned, the verb assert
from [21] has been substituted with claim in [20], and the quoted phrase beyond
argument from [21] has been omitted in [20]. The verb receive from [23] has
been substituted with take in [22] and the active construction in [23] has been
substituted with a passive construction in [22]. By the use of UNSIG, some facts
from the hearing, concerning who said what, have not been reported accurately,
but apart from that the changes are more or less stylistic.
[24] Според нас основната причина е състоянието на железопътната
инфраструктура и спешно трябва да се вземат мерки за да се
предотвратят бъдещи инциденти (In our opinion, the main reason is
the condition of the railway infrastructure and urgent measures must be
taken to prevent future incidents) (24 Ch/24.01.20); [25] Убедени сме, че
основната причина е състоянието на железопътната инфраструктура
и че трябва да се вземат спешни мерки за предотвратяване на
бъдещи инциденти (We are convinced that the main reason is the state
prevent future incidents) (PC).
Example [24] from 24 Chasa starts with the phrase според нас (in our opinion),
which can mislead the casual reader into thinking that this is the media
representatives who express their opinion. This definitely is dissemination of
a higher order than the one found in examples [20] and [22] taken from the
British media discourse. Even though the framework does not provide a scale
for measurement of the degree of dissemination, it is clear that this example has
a higher impact factor than the examples from the British media.
[26] Машинистите нямат решаваща вина за инцидента в Хитрино,
ние твърдо стоим зад тях. (The train drivers are not to blame for the
accident in Hitrino, we stand firmly behind them.) (M/24.01.20); [27]
Какви ще бъдат действията на машинистите и техните защитници
към настоящия момент не ни е известно, но предполагаме, че те
ще обжалват присъдата… ааа… но какви… каквото и решение
да вземат искам да знаете, че ние твърдо стоим зад тях. … Това
са аргументите ни да считаме, че машинистите не са виновни в
причинения инцидент (What the actions of the train drivers and their
defenders will be at the moment we do not know, but we assume that they
will appeal the verdict… aaa… but whatever … whatever decision they
make I want you to know that we stand firmly behind them. … These
are our arguments to believe that the drivers are not to blame for the
accident). (PC).
Example [26] from Monitor similarly to example [24] from 24 Chasa is
ambiguously worded because the deictic ние (we) may refer either to the
representative of Bulmarket or the journalist and editors working for Monitor.
Of course, such examples are part of a wider context and readers will probably
work out that this is the opinion of Bulmarket and not the opinion of the
journalist writing the article and the editors of the article who have approved of
its publication. Even so, the fact that these examples have been typographically
demarcated as primary discourse signifies that the voice of the journalist
endorses the statements made by Bulmarket and thus the secondary discourse
is ascribed massive legitimacy.
Table 6.
Stylisticity and Situationality
STYLISTICITY AND SITUATIONALITY
BR BG BR and BG
No. % No. % No. % No. % No. % No. % No. %
STYLE 2/26 8 0/26 0 2/52 4 0/9 0 0/23 0 0/32 0 2/84 2
SIT 11/26 42 5/26 19 16/52 31 1/9 11 2/23 9 3/32 9 19/84 23
As seen from Table 6 stylistisity is very low. From the 84 instances of discourse
representation only 2 instances exhibit the representation of stylistic meanings
of the secondary discourse. Situationality is a bit higher and 19 out of the 84
instances in the four newspapers (23%) represent the context of situation. Most
of the instances of situationality represent the tenor of discourse, while some
of the instances represent the field of discourse. The British media (31%) have
represented the context of situation much more than the Bulgarian media (9%).
Stylistisity and situationality are used as setting devices and will be discussed
qualitatively in the section concerning the parameter setting.
Table 7.
Setting
SETTING
BR BG BR and BG
No. % No. % No. % No. % No. % No. % No. %
F 1/26 0.26 3/26 12 4/52 8 2/9 22 2/23 9 4/32 13 8/84 10
IF 5/26 19 5/26 19 10/52 19 4/9 44 9/23 39 13/32 41 23/84 27
TOTAL
15/26 58 11/26 42 26/52 50 5/9 56 10/23 43 15/32 47 41/84 49
SETTING
Table 7 shows that apart from stylistisity and situationality, whose data is
represented on Table 6, the British and the Bulgarian media have relied on
two more types of setting devices for the contextualization of the secondary
discourse with the intention of controlling its interpretation by the reader,
which are formulation (F) and the representation of the illocutionary force of
the secondary discourse through the reporting verb (IF). As far as the combined
figure of the four newspapers is concerned, 10% of the instances (8 out of 84)
show the implementation of formulation, and the Bulgarian newspapers have a
slightly larger percentage (13%) than the British ones. Here is an instance of the
representation of the context of situation from the British media discourse:
[28] Jose Torero, academic and fire safety expert, came to a damning
conclusion about the building regulation system, stating that “systems
that introduce obvious dangers can be incorporated by designers in a
routine manner.” (G/04.06.18).
Example [28] shows the representation of the tenor of discourse with the phrase
academic and fire safety expert and the use of the style adjunct damning as a
setting device. The already discussed example [10] reprinted for clarity below is
an example of representation of the field of the secondary discourse.
[10] The public inquiry into the disaster heard today there were a catalogue
of safety failings in the West London tower block /c/ (S/05.06.18).
The introductory clause of example [10], which is primary discourse, shows the
context of situation with the noun phrase the public inquiry into the disaster and
the deictic today, where the use of the deictic is an example of a factual error.
Deictic expressions do not have a meaning of their own, but they change their
meaning depending on who, in what circumstances uses them. In the context
of an article, the deictic today should refer to the date on which the article is
published. The date and time specified in the article in The Sun are 5 June 2018,
0:55. The hearing of the inquiry reported in the article was held on 4 June 2018.
Obviously, by looking at the time of the publication, it becomes evident that
the article was prepared on 4 June and published at night. Still, it should have
been indicated that the inquiry heard yesterday and not today from the point of
view of the time of publication of the article. It is not clear whether this was a
deliberate act or an unintentional mistake, but it shows that even the primary
discourse can contain some distorted information. Example [10], which is a
caption under a picture, shows the use of formulation, since it repeats the first
sentence in the article in The Sun.
The Bulgarian newspapers (41%) have represented the illocutionary force of the
secondary discourse more than twice as much as the British media (19%). Since
more than one setting device is implemented in some instances, the total number
of the instances, which show the implementation of different setting devices, is
lower than the sum of the individual numbers for the different setting devices.
The incidence of total setting in the four articles is 49% with the British media
(50%) having a slightly higher percentage than the Bulgarian media (47%).
24 Chasa have relied on metapropositional verbs 8 times, which include се
аргументира (adduced arguments/ argued), твърдят (maintain, assert,
claim), посочи (pointed out), which is used 3 times, припомниха (brought it
up, reminded), заяви (declare, announce), which is used 2 times. There is one
transcript verb – допълни (added) in their article. There are not any neutral
reporting verbs and the used metapropositional verbs are all assertives. Machin
and Mayr (2012, pp. 63-64) state that even the transcript verb add might be
used by the press media to give the impression that a person they are promoting
offers more information, when in fact they might be presenting the same point.
The analysis of the reporting verbs together with the fact that 54% of all the
instances of discourse representation in the article by 24 Chasa are in UNSIG
(see Table 1) show that the newspaper endorses the statements of Bulmarket.
[29] От фирмата припомниха, че през тези три години, докато траеше
разследването и съдебния процес, са били умерени в публичността
си (The company reminded [the audience]/ brought it up that for the past
three years, during the investigation and trial, they have been moderate
in their publicity). (24Ch/24.01.20).
Let us assess the use of the verb припомниха (brought sth up) in example [29],
by replacing it with an alternative one, like признаха (admitted). Normally,
companies who are core participants in an inquiry are frowned upon when they
keep a low profile, since that can be viewed as a form of avoidance of responsibility
or a silent acceptance of guilt. Thus, the use of признаха (admitted) could have
been used by unfriendly media to ascribe guilt to the company. But 24 Chasa
have opted for припомниха (brought it up). People who bring up a subject are
in control and sound authoritative.
Monitor have relied on metapropositional verbs 3 times, including посочи
(pointed out), which is used 2 times and коментира (commented). There is one
transcript verb – допълни (added) and two neutral verbs in their article. The
fact that the newspaper uses a combination of neutral and metapropositional
verbs corresponds to the lower percentage of instances in UNSIG (20%) than
24 Chasa (see Table 1), and shows that the newspaper is more moderate in its
representation, while still showing inclination towards presupposing positive
interpretation of the statements made by Bulmarket. Example [1], which was
discussed above, marks a case of implementation of the verb посочи (pointed
out) by the media, which presents the representative of Bulmarket as authoritative
and legitimate.
[30] Това коментира днес в Русе заместник-управителят на

„Булмаркет“ Светослав Първанов по повод на приключилото на
първа инстанция дело за железопътната катастрофа на 10 декември
2016 г., довела до смъртта на седем души. (This was commented today
in Ruse by the Deputy Manager of Bulmarket Svetoslav Parvanov on the
occasion of the closed case in the first instance on the railway accident
on December 10, 2016, which resulted in the death of seven people.)
(M/24.01.20).
Example [30] shows an instance of the newly introduced mode ID(S),
characteristic only of the Bulgarian media, which “slips” into ID from UNSIG
in the previous sentence, where the statement of the representative of Bulmarket
(secondary discourse) was presented under the guise of primary discourse. The
confusion concerning who said what from the previous sentence might have
been cleared up with that sentence, but the use of the reporting verb comment
with the fact that the author has shown that they share the opinion of Parvanov
further ascribe legitimacy to the statement of the company.
The Guardian have used neutral structuring verbs 14 times, and have relied
on metapropositional verbs 5 times, which include claimed, insisted, stating,
revealed, and warned. The ratio between the neutral and prepositional verbs
is almost 3 to 1, which shows that most of the time the newspaper has allowed
the readers to derive the illocutionary force of the secondary discourse on
their own. Let us look at some examples, where the illocutionary force of the
secondary discourse is explicitly stated in the primary discourse. We will start
with the already discussed example [20], reprinted below, and example [31],
which happen to be two adjacent sentences in the article.
[20] One survivors’ group has claimed in evidence to the inquiry that
many more people would have survived if the advice had been revoked
earlier. (G/04.06.2018); [31] But Millett insisted that was “very far from
beyond argument” and that the timing of that advice and its consequences
would have to be explored in evidence. (G/04.06.18).
Example [20] uses the verb phrase claim in evidence, which sounds almost
like an oxymoron, since claim is defined as “to state that something is true,
even though it has not been proved”, while evidence is defined as “information
that is given in a court of law in order to prove that someone is guilty or not
guilty”. According to the taxonomy of Caldas-Coulthard (1994) claim is a
metapropositional expressive and Machin and Mayr (2012, p. 61) state that the
use of this word invites doubt. The use of evidence, on the other hand, invites
trust. The effect of this juxtaposition of the two opposing meanings, which seem
to neutralize each other, is the distancing of the newspaper from the statement.
The opposing statement of Mr Millett is introduced with the verb insist, which
was already discussed as having potential to undermine the legibility of a

statement and thus the newspaper distances from that statement, too.
[32] In an opening statement that lasted most of the day, Richard Millett
QC, counsel to the inquiry, warned the companies and organisations
called to give evidence not to “indulge in a merry-go-round of buck
passing”. (G/04.06.18).
Example [32] shows a combination of setting devices. The secondary discourse
is contextualized within a long opening statement presented by a lawyer, who is
also counsel to the inquiry and has the authority to issue warnings, which gives
the secondary discourse massive legitimacy. Here the newspaper endorses the
claim that the core participants have to accept their respective responsibilities
for the disaster, which resulted is such a great loss of life.
The Sun have used neutral structuring verbs 3 times and have relied on
metapropositional verbs 2 times and have implemented one transcript verb
(add) 3 times, which shows that its commitment to neutrality is lower than that
of The Guardian, which corresponds to its higher usage of UNSIG (see Table
1). The two metapropositional verbs used by The Sun are explained from the
already discussed example [16] and concluding from example [33].
[33] The blaze climbed 50 metres up 19 floors in just 12 minutes, with Dr
Barbara Lane, a fire safety engineer, concluding in a report: “The ultimate
consequence was a disproportionately high loss of life.” (S/05.06.18).
In both cases quotes from experts are introduced. The contextualization of the
secondary discourse in [33] is achieved with different setting devices apart
from the reporting verb conclude, which presupposes the interpretation that the
secondary discourse is a result of sound reasoning and thus trustworthy.
Conclusion
The results from the research allow us to draw the following conclusions:
Concerning the mode of representation, the Bulgarian newspapers prefer ID
over DD, while the British ones prefer DD over ID and the combined figures
show that the instances showing ID are about as many as the instances showing
DD. DD(S) is only characteristic of the British newspapers, while the newly
introduced ID(S) is only characteristic of the Bulgarian newspapers. There is
a very high percentage of instances in UNSIG, with the Bulgarian newspapers
showing a much higher usage of that mode. This leads us to the conclusion
that the Bulgarian newspapers have adopted to a higher degree the position
of interpreters between their readers and the reported sources, since Indirect
Discourse is the mode which allows the reporter to be in the position of an
interpreter between the person whose words are reported and the person to
whom the words are being reported and at the same time it gives more control
over the report to the reporter (see Leech & Short, 1981, pp. 256, 260). The
British newspapers are more committed to represent the exact form of secondary
discourse (ibid., p. 257) but as is seen from the data concerning the interaction
between DD and Boundary maintenance this commitment is not absolute, since
incorporation could be noticed even within instances of DD.
Concerning Boundary Maintenance, as far as the combined figures for all the
modes are concerned, for the most part there is a lack of commitment to the
faithful representation of the secondary discourse (a very low percentage of
instances, which show neither incorporation nor dissemination) and the British
media have a little bit more instances without incorporation and dissemination
than the Bulgarian media. The Bulgarian media show a higher percentage of
incorporation. The findings for the British media concerning incorporation are
comparable, diachronically, with the findings of Fairclough, with a difference
of 2% (73% from the present research vs 71% from the research carried out by
Fairclough). Both the British and the Bulgarian media transmit the authority of
the quoted sources and alter the secondary discourse, but the Bulgarian media
tends to preserve and transmit the authority of the quoted sources twice as much
as the British media.
As far as the boundary maintenance within the different modes is concerned, the
Bulgarian media have more instances without incorporation or dissemination
within the instances in ID, and have a higher percentage of instances with
dissemination. Within the instances in ID, the British media have more cases
with incorporation. The findings of this research support the findings of the
research carried out by Fairclough that ID does not always express the full
ideational meaning of secondary discourse and seem to contradict the suggestion
of Leech and Short (1981), concerning the commitment of ID to represent
the full ideational meaning of secondary discourse, because both the present
research and Fairclough’s research studied media texts, which reports other
texts considered an original, giving the researcher a base for comparison, while
Leech and Short’s research had used literary fiction texts, where the reported
lines were the fictitious words of imaginary characters, which could not be
compared with an original. With respect to DD, there are not any instances
without incorporation or dissemination from the Bulgarian media discourse,
while one third of the instances from the British media discourse are without
incorporation and dissemination. The instances with incorporation within DD
from the Bulgarian media discourse are almost twice as many as the instances
from the British media discourse. Also, the instances with dissemination within
DD in the Bulgarian media discourse are three times as many as the instances
in the British media discourse, and all the instances from the Bulgarian media
discourse show dissemination. With respect to UNSIG there are no differences
between the Bulgarian and the British media discourse since all the instances
show both incorporation and dissemination.
Stylisticity is very low. There are two instances in the British media and no
instances in the Bulgarian media. Situationality is higher and the British media
have represented the context of situation to a greater extent than the Bulgarian
media. With respect to setting, apart from stylisticity and situationality the
Bulgarian and the British media have used formulation and representation of
the illocutionary force of the secondary discourse through the reporting verb
as setting devices. The Bulgarian media have more instances of formulation
and representation of the illocutionary force of secondary discourse through the
reporting verbs than the British media, which reveals that the former are more
inclined to exert influence on their readers than the latter.
Despite the relative depth of the study, considering the fact that it is based on
a small number of articles, the possibility of widening its scope through the
addition of more articles remains strong.
References:
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in factual and factional narratives. In M. Coulthard (ed.), Advances in written test
analysis (pp. 295-308). London: Routledge.
Cheshmedzieva-Stoycheva, D. (2018). Framing Muslims in the Bulgarian and the
British media discourse. Shumen: Konstantin Preslavsky University Press.
Fairclough, N. (1995). Critical discourse analysis: The critical study of language.
London and New York: Longman.
Fowler, R. (1991). Language in the news: Discourse and ideology in the press. London,
New York: Routledge.
Halliday, M. A. K. (1978). Language as social semiotic: The social interpretation of
language and meaning. London: Edward Arnold.
Heritage, J. C., & Watson, D. R. (1979). Formulations as conventional objects. In G.
Psathas (Ed.), Everyday language: Studies in ethnomethodology (pp. 124-162). New
York: Irvington.
Leech, G. N., & Short, M. (1981). Style in fiction. London: Longman.
Machin, D., & Mayr, A. (2012). How to do critical discourse analysis: A multimodal
introduction. London: SAGE Publications Ltd.
McHale, B. (1978). Free indirect speech: A survey of recent accounts. Poetics and the
theory of literature, 3, 249-287.
McNair, B. (2009). News and journalism in the UK. London, New York: Routledge.
Pashov, P. (1989). Prakticheska bulgarska gramatika. Sofia: Prosveta.
Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G. N., & Svartvik, J. (1972). A grammar of
contemporary English. London: Longman.
Searle, J. R. (1969). Speech acts: An essay in the philosophy of language. New York:
Cambridge University Press.
Searle, J. R. (1976). A classification of illocutionary acts. Language in society, 5(1,
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Volume 9, Issue 1 - 2021 · ISSN 2534-9538

Konstan﬒n Preslavsky Universi﬑ of Shumen

Konstantin Preslavsky University of Shumen

SILC is indexed and watched by EBSCO, Directory of Open Access Journals,

© Individual contributions: respective authors

FEATURE: A GENOLOGICAL DRAFT

TRANSLATORS’ DILEMMAS IN TRANSLATING POETRY:

ANOREXIA MIRABILIS DECODED: REREADING

RESEARCH METHODS IN LINGUISTICS: AN OVERVIEW

TO DISTORT OR NOT TO DISTORT: COMPARATIVE

Definitions of the genre: western and Polish perspective

exemplifications of the genre provide listeners with an aesthetic experience,

The planetary, non-linear arrangement presented below places feature in the

Documentary radio drama as Marchwicki by Michał Turowski could be another

The contemporary feature and its subgenres

in dramatized scenes carrying the listener to hero’s contemporary times, the

documentary is still also applied interchangeably. Polish definitions of the

TRANSLATORS’ DILEMMAS IN TRANSLATING POETRY:

Abstract: Poetry translation is considered the most challenging type of translation.

Is poetry translation possible?

due to linguistic and cultural differences, poetry ‘suffers’ inevitable distortions

Major problems in translating poetry

equivalent, description equivalent, classifier, componential analysis, deletion,

Translation methods used in poetry translation

Purpose and methodology

Analysis and results

Gane Todorovski’s poetry

Analysis of “Love Song” vs. “Ljubovna”

e.g. 2 Догледање! До прва пролет! Farewell! Till the coming spring!

The figurative language use in the poem is marked by an underlying ‘river’

e.g. 8 Таа е бучна, кога е полна, When full it is full of noise

e.g. 11 Ќе дотрчаш ко река, You will come running like a river

Speaking of the figurative language used, apart from the abovementioned

a completely different imagery than its original counterpart. Similarly, the

Analysis of “Vo docna prolet kon Nerezi” vs.

As far as the eye can see: bread-bearing fields

One interesting finding to be highlighted is that some of the sentences in the

Although the author’s style as to the syntactic structure of sentences is clearly

e.g. 22 Го пресртнуваме забрзано поточето, We happen on the hurrying brook,

be two-sided: both poems have been translated in verse, if we take ‘verse’ to

Starova, L. (2006). Nacionalnoto i univerzalnoto vo tvoreshtvoto na Gane Todorovski.

Најчесто, токму што се разденило, Often enough just as day dawns

Other Authors’ Notes:

ANOREXIA MIRABILIS DECODED: REREADING

Abstract: This article makes a deconstructionist reading of anorexic women

This article is a response to feminist readings of corporeal consumption in Gail

accepted this mode of female consumption as something self-chosen or rather

News such as the Pall Mall Gazette or The Western Mail (Cardiff, Wales), the

translates into increased consumption of patriarchal values, which ultimately

successful man of business. Unsurprisingly, Amy chooses Arthur, thus opting

A major development of the subject at-hand is the treatment of Dora Spenlow

women may be summed up in three words – youth, health, plumpness.

Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods research

Mixed methods research

•• the manner in which the research questions are developed (participatory

Mixed method research is seen as “increasing the strengths” of one method

Quality criteria in quantitative research

Dörnyei “a test is valid if it measures what it is supposed to measure” (2007,

Quality criteria in qualitative research

Richard clarify the tendency of neglecting reliability in the past “reliability

Lincoln and Guba’s taxonomy of quality criteria

Maxwell’s taxonomy of validity in qualitative research

Research design-based strategies